LONDON/PARIS, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Britain said it was ready to send peacekeeping troops to back up any peace deal for Ukraine as European leaders gathered on Monday to agree a unified strategy, while Russian and U.S. officials prepared to meet for their own competing talks.
The Europeans were holding an emergency summit in Paris to discuss their role in Ukraine’s future after President Donald Trump’s U.S. administration, Kyiv’s main military backer, announced it would sit down with Russia to seek an end to thethree-year-old war. Russia has ruled out conceding territory.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s comments on Sunday reflect a growing realisation among European nations that they will have to play a bigger role in ensuring Ukraine’s security. Washington has made clear to Europe it must stop relying on the United States for its defence.
A peacekeeping force would not only raise the risk of a direct confrontation with Russia but also stretch European armies, whose stocks have been depleted by supplying Ukraine and decades of relative peace. There are also difficult questions about how some European nations, whose public finances are already groaning, will pay for such efforts.
Germany said on Monday it “will not shy away” from contributing ground troops in an appropriate framework in Ukraine, against which Russia launched a full-scale invasion in 2022, but that no concrete agreements were expected in Paris.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also said there was “absolutely a possibility” of sending Swedish peacekeepers, if and when there was a clear mandate. Ukraine’s neighbour Poland, which has NATO’s third largest army, said it would provide logistical and physical help, but not troops.
Trump stunned Ukraine and European allies last week when he announced he had called Russian President Vladimir Putin, ostracised by the West, to discuss ending the war without consulting them.
US AND RUSSIA TO MEET IN SAUDI ARABIA
Senior U.S. and Russian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. The talks will be the highest-level in-person discussions in years between Russian and U.S. officials and are meant to precede a meeting between Trump and Putin.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio set off for Riyadh with national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, while the Kremlin said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov would take part.
As fighting rages on, with Russia making slow but steady advances, Lavrov ruled out ceding any of the 20% of Ukraine it now controls.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visiting the United Arab Emirates, dismissed the talks in Saudi Arabia.
“Ukraine regards any negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine as ones that have no result, and we cannot recognise … any agreements about us, without us,” he told reporters.