“President Trump signaled on Tuesday that the U.S. is prepared to use air power to support a European security force in Ukraine but ruled out deploying American ground troops.
"When it comes to security, they are willing to put people on the ground," Trump said in a Fox News interview, referring to the Europeans. "We're willing to help them with things, especially probably, if you talk about by air, because there is nobody has the kind of stuff we have, really they don't have."
Planning for the multinational force to be sent to Ukraine if a peace settlement is reached accelerated on Tuesday, a day after Trump discussed the idea at the White House with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other European leaders.
After Trump's summit with his Russian counterpart in Alaska, the president tasked Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to develop options for NATO-like security guarantees for that force, a Western official said.
Caine was set to meet in person on Tuesday with military chiefs from nations that participated in the White House meeting on Ukraine a day earlier, including Britain, France, Germany and Finland, two Western officials said. The purpose of the meeting, which was to include Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's top military commander and the head of U.S. forces in Europe, was to refine military options for the political leaders, one of the officials said.
Grynkewich is also slated to brief a larger group of NATO defense chiefs over videoconference on the conflict in Ukraine on Wednesday, a senior NATO military officer said.
But the planned force faces a number of major diplomatic challenges. While Trump has said he expects President Vladimir Putin of Russia to accept the presence of Western troops in Ukraine, Russia has objected to the idea.
Trump didn't specify the role the U.S. military might have in providing air support to a European ground force -- whether it would include warplanes, air-defense systems or surveillance drones, for instance. The Pentagon could deploy aircraft outside Ukraine to protect European troops, including jet fighters to aid European forces in the country if they are attacked or surveillance drones to monitor any peace agreement. The U.S. could also fly European troops and equipment on its cargo planes, provide ground-based air-defense systems to the European and contribute military intelligence.
European governments, led by the U.K. and France, have lobbied Washington for months to back what they described as a "reassurance force" that would be deployed to Ukraine after a cease-fire.
European nations are wary of sending their forces to Ukraine without an assurance that U.S. forces could intervene if the troops are attacked.
In a sign NATO members are concerned about possible military moves by Moscow, the alliance on Tuesday said its military forces, including its air-defense systems, had been put on alert when Russian aircraft launched missile attacks on Ukraine.
The alliance said the move was made out of concern that the Russian missiles might enter the airspace over Poland, which includes a logistics hub that is used to send equipment to Ukraine. As it turned out, no Russian violations of Polish airspace occurred.
Following the White House meeting with top European leaders on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will start working with the Europeans on plans for a security guarantee for Ukraine. These guarantees could include a potential promise to back up Ukraine modeled on NATO's Article 5, which stipulates that an attack on one alliance member should be considered an attack on all, officials said.
Without a credible U.S. security guarantee, "it is hard to see how you can have an effective deterrence of Russia or reassurance of Ukraine," said James Black, a deputy director at Rand Europe, a think tank. European militaries lack logistics, intelligence gathering, cybersecurity, and large-scale precision missiles, needed to sustain a conflict with nuclear Russia, he said.
Defining the U.S. role is aimed at giving countries such as Germany and Italy more confidence about participating in any Ukraine force.
The plan for a reassurance force was hatched by the British and French shortly before Trump won re-election. It took on greater urgency after Zelensky's Oval Office clash with Trump in February. Initially, the Europeans planned to put up to 30,000 troops on the ground. But Trump showed little interest in U.S. involvement, and several European nations, including Germany and Italy, balked at sending troops. The U.K. and France then began discussing a more-modest force that would be based far from the front line.
European forces wouldn't likely be near whatever de facto border or legal frontier emerges between Russian and Ukrainian forces if a peace agreement is hammered out. They could be placed at strategically important locations, such as airports and military centers.
"One of the trickiest tasks in the work undertaken by our military planners is that it is not clear in what circumstances any forces may be required to be deployed, and it is not clear that the details of the negotiated peace deal we all want to see will be in place," U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey told Parliament in April.” [1]
1. President Weighs Air Aid To EU in Ukraine --- Trump rules out putting U.S. troops on ground if a deal is reached to halt war. Seligman, Lara; Gordon, Michael R; Colchester, Max. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 Aug 2025: A1.
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