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UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR Zelenskyy has said he spoke with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron today and discussed the idea of Western “contingents” being deployed to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader did not say whether he was talking about the West sending combat troops or peacekeepers as part of a settlement to end the nearly three-year war with Russia.
“Today I spoke with the president of France. It was a rather long and detailed conversation. We discussed defence support – various forms of defence, arms packages for Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address.
“We also discussed the deployment of partner contingents and the training of our military,” he added.
Macron has floated the idea of sending Western troops to Ukraine before, including last month when he and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussed the possibility of stationing peacekeepers there in the event of a ceasefire.
Moscow accelerated its advances in Ukraine last year, as Kyiv’s overstretched army suffered from exhaustion and a lack of manpower.
US President-elect Donald Trump has promised to bring a swift end to the fighting when he enters office next week, raising fears in Ukraine that it will be forced to make major territorial concessions in exchange for peace.
Speaking this evening, US President Joe Biden mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin over the state of the war.
“When Putin invaded, he thought he’d conquer Kyiv in a matter of days. The truth is, since that war began I’m the only one that stood in the center of Kyiv, not him,” said Biden.
Biden became the first sitting US president to visit a warzone not controlled by American forces when he made a top secret visit to Ukraine’s capital in 2023.
He said the United States and its allies “can’t walk away” from Ukraine, to which Washington has sent billions of dollars in military aid since the war started in 2022.
Also today, NATO chief Mark Rutte said that Ukraine is not currently in a strong enough position for peace talks with Russia.
“At this moment, clearly Ukraine is not there, because they cannot at this moment negotiate from a position of strength,” Rutte told EU politicians.
“We have to do more to make sure by changing the trajectory of the conflict that they can get to that position of strength.”
Still, Biden’s outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the New York Times in an interview recently that territorial losses by Ukraine were not likely to be reversed anytime soon, even with a ceasefire deal.
“Where the line is drawn on the map at this point, I don’t think is fundamentally going to change very much,” Blinken said when asked about the possibilities for an end to the conflict.
“The line, as a practical matter in the foreseeable future, is unlikely to move very much. Ukraine’s claim on that territory will always, always be there. And the question is, will they find ways with the support of others to regain territory that’s been lost? It’s unlikely that Putin will give up on his ambitions.”
With the beginning of the second Trump administration just two weeks away, the head of the European Council Antonio Costa has invited EU heads of state to a defence “retreat” involving UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO chief Mark Rutte.
The “retreat” is to take place on 3 February in Belgium.
“Europe needs to assume greater responsibility for its own defence,” European Council chief Antonio Costa wrote today in a letter.
“I believe we share a similar assessment of the threats Europe is facing,” Costa told member states – with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine spelling the return of “high-intensity war” to the continent, along with a surging threat from hybrid and cyber attacks against member states.
“Peace in Europe depends on Ukraine winning a comprehensive, just and lasting peace,” Costa underlined, warning that the geopolitical outlook for the bloc would “remain challenging in the foreseeable future”.
With reporting from AFP
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