BRUSSELS — Britain’s chief foreign minister praised Donald Trump’s role in trying to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, despite fears he may lose interest in finding a settlement that is acceptable to Kyiv.

In an interview with POLITICO after attending a conference with European partners on curbing illegal migration on Wednesday, Yvette Cooper denied that Trump’s unpredictability is making her job harder. 

“Actually, it’s only because of the work that President Trump and the U.S. system have done that we have reached the ceasefire in Gaza,” the U.K. foreign secretary said, while also crediting nations including Egypt and Turkey.

Her comments came after Trump attacked efforts by European leaders to end the war, saying in an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for her podcast The Conversation: “They talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.”

Trump also renewed his call for Ukraine to hold new elections, ratcheting up pressure on President Volodomyr Zelenskyy as he seeks to turn the page on a corruption scandal.

Cooper insisted the U.S. is “very serious” about making progress in the current set of peace talks, following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday.

“The work that the U.S. is doing to pursue a peace process is incredibly important, and the work that Marco Rubio has been doing as part of those discussions is also hugely important,” she added.

Cooper suggested the U.S. would deliver on security guarantees in the event of a ceasefire, a key element of negotiations which have so far proved hard to pin down.

“It can’t just be an agreement that means that Putin can just pause and then come again, and I think the U.S. are very clear about that,” she said.

Trump’s virulent attack on European leaders — who he said were “weak” and presiding over “decaying” nations due to mass migration — did not come up during her meetings on Wednesday, which included talks with European Commissioner for Migration Magnus Brunner and Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot, Cooper said.

Cooper announced earlier Wednesday that the U.K. Foreign Office will double the size of its migration unit, which is involved in discussions around the return of migrants to other countries.

The U.K. foreign secretary did not rule out taking up an offer by Jordan Bardella, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, to conduct “pushbacks” of migrant boats in the English Channel.

Such a move, never previously accepted by France, would involve British Border Force boats directing laden dinghies, bound for the U.K., to turn around at sea.

Cooper suggested the U.K.’s focus is on French police, rather than pushback powers for the U.K. Border Force. “You’re seeing those boats set off. Once they’re in the water, then the previous rules have meant that the French police have not been able to actually take action. We need that to happen. That’s been agreed in principle. We need to see that in force,” she said.

However, she declined to directly criticize the idea of pushback, which opponents argue could cause more migrants to drown in the Channel.

“Everything has to be safely done,” Cooper told POLITICO, “but there are ways of making sure that the French authorities and the U.K. authorities are always cooperating on making sure that things are safe.

“The U.K. will always do its bit to help those who fled persecution and conflict, but we also have to be able to do more returns and more law enforcement, and we’ll always look at different ways to do that.”

Asked again if pushback was not “totally off the table,” Cooper — who was until recently Britain’s interior minister — replied: “We will look at any mechanism that can work effectively and also can work safely.

“Because what we want to see is action that prevents these dangerous boat crossings — because lives are being put at risk every time people get into those dangerous small boats and criminal gangs are making hundreds of millions of pounds of profit.”

Cooper spoke as U.K. Justice Secretary David Lammy attended parallel talks in Strasbourg with European allies on reforming the application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to remove some legal hurdles to deporting migrants.

European foreign ministers are due to meet in May 2026 to take “the next steps forward” on ECHR reform, Cooper said.

Illegal immigration is “deeply damaging” and causes a “deep sense of injustice that people feel if the law are not enforced,” Cooper said. but insisted: “Legal migration, on the other hand, has been part of our history for generations and will always be important.”