"Western Europeans are trying to hash out a bold idea: sending 10,000 to 30,000 troops to Ukraine to help enforce any eventual peace deal with Russia.
With cease-fire talks continuing with the Kremlin, defense officials from dozens of Western nations met in the U.K. on Thursday to hammer out details of how the "coalition of the willing" led by the U.K. and France could help Ukraine. No U.S. troops would be involved.
The unusual talks -- Western military allies getting together without the Americans -- are the latest sign of the world's shifting geopolitics. The pivot in U.S. diplomacy to accommodate Russia has left Western allies struggling with how to help Ukraine find a lasting peace, especially since they lack the military capacity that only the U.S. can bring.
Already, however, discussions among these allies are proving arduous. A major concern is that coalition troops could get sucked into a hot war with Russia without substantial U.S. support to back them up. There is also a debate over whether the Western troops in Ukraine would even be permitted to fire at Russians if there were an incursion.
So far, only Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Australia have said they are considering putting boots on the ground.
Eastern European nations say they don't want to send troops into Ukraine for fear of provoking Russia and weakening their own defenses, but they could provide logistical help instead.
The group of defense officials met on Thursday to discuss "the nuts-and-bolts planning as to what a force would look like," U.K. Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard said.
In a speech to the participants at the meeting on Thursday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it was vital to start detailing plans now that would help ensure Ukraine's future security, before a final peace deal.
As things stand, the chance of this force ever heading to Ukraine is a long shot, said Bence Nemeth, a defense expert at King's College London. European leaders say they will only send troops if there is a lasting peace in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out signing a peace deal that includes Western forces in Ukraine.
But one could dream up the ways around Russia's opposition to a peacekeeping force, Nemeth said, such as including troops Russia sees as friendly -- from China or India, for example.
Crucially, the coalition of the willing also wants a commitment from the U.S. that it will intervene if Russia breaks the terms of the peace. The specific ask that Europe will make for an American insurance policy is still being fleshed out, officials say. However, it would likely include asking at the very least for logistical support, air-defense capabilities and intelligence gathering to help monitor Russian forces, European officials said. It would also require clearly stated U.S. political backing for the European deployment, said Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
President Trump hasn't committed to this. In a White House meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said a deal to give the U.S. preferential access to minerals in Ukraine would be enough of a security guarantee to deter Putin from invading Ukraine.
Kyiv and European capitals disagree.
European officials say that as military chiefs have got involved in the planning, there has been more realism about the constraints on sending a larger force.
For European allies, a large force committed to Ukraine could drain vital NATO resources from across the rest of the European front line with Russia, in particular Finland and the Baltics. It would also be potentially a decadeslong commitment that could prove hugely expensive.
The exercise shines a light on Europe's military weakness after decades of cuts to defense spending following the end of the Cold War. Countries such as Britain, France and Germany are slowly ramping up defense spending, but the process will take years.
For instance, if the U.K. sent a 5,000-strong brigade to Ukraine it would absorb about half of Britain's field army, given the need to regularly rotate troops to allow them to rest and train, says Ed Arnold, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a military think tank.
"It would be better to not even attempt an operation at all, rather than get bounced into a poorly defined mission by Trump and be left with the consequences," he said.
Another option would be to send a smaller forward contingent that could prepare the way for rapid reinforcement in times of crisis, said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of RUSI, just as NATO has done in case of an imagined Russian attack on the Baltic states or Poland.
U.K. officials are hopeful that other nations will join the peacekeeping force. In addition to European countries, Canada and Japan have indicated a willingness to play a role. The force wouldn't be part of NATO and may require its own headquarters and command structure.
French and British officials have ruled out the idea of using a deployment as a tripwire force that would man the border between Russian Ukraine and the rest of Ukraine.” [1]
Funny to see, that Lithuanian president G. Nausėda, who is living in a glass house in a park illegally, is not a normal Eastern European. He badly wants to send Lithuanian troops to Ukraine, glass shards be damned.
1. World News: Europe Tackles Plans for Ukraine Peacekeeping Force. Norman, Laurence; Colchester, Max. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 21 Mar 2025: A8.
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