Europe hatches plans for Ukraine peacekeepers without US

Defence chiefs from the ‘coalition of the willing’ discuss how best to put boots on the ground in Ukraine if there is peace.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is among the European leaders driving postwar planning for Ukraine. Picture: AFP

Western allies are trying to hash out a bold European idea: sending 10,000 to 30,000 troops to Ukraine to help enforce any eventual peace deal with Russia.

With ceasefire talks continuing with the Kremlin, defence officials from dozens of Western nations met in the UK on Thursday to hammer out details of how the so-called “coalition of the willing” led by the UK and France could help Ukraine deter Russia from attacking in the future. No US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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 defences, but they could provide logistical help instead. The group of defence officials met Thursday to discuss “the nuts-and-bolts planning as to what a force would look like,” UK Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard said.

As things stand, the chance of this force ever heading to Ukraine is a long shot, says Bence Németh, a defence 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 so far ruled out signing a peace deal that includes Western forces in Ukraine.

But there may be ways around Russia’s opposition to a peacekeeping force, says Németh, such as including troops that Russia sees as friendly — from China or India, for example.

Ukrainian infantry train in their country’s east. Picture: AFP

Crucially, the “coalition of the willing” also wants a commitment from the US 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-defence capabilities and intelligence gathering to help monitor Russian forces, according to European officials.

It would also require clearly stated US political backing for the European deployment, said Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

President Trump so far hasn’t committed to this. In a White House meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said that a deal to give the US preferential access to minerals in Ukraine would be enough of a security guarantee to deter Putin from reinvading 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 defence spending following the end of the Cold War. Countries such as Britain, France and Germany are slowly ramping up defence spending, but the process will take years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has resisted the idea of Western forces in Ukraine. Picture: AFP

For instance, if the UK sent a 5,000-strong brigade to Ukraine it would absorb approximately 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 says.

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 a Russian attack on the Baltic States or Poland.

UK officials are hopeful that other nations will join the peacekeeping force over time. 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 trip-wire force that would man the border between Russian-occupied Ukraine and the rest of Ukraine. They would be more likely to adopt roles like ensuring air and maritime security and protecting key infrastructure such as airports. Some officials say the deployed troops could be involved in training Ukrainian troops on the ground.

The size of a deployment is also uncertain. British officials have spoken of at least 10,000, but some French officials have floated a much bigger force of as many as 30,000. Ukraine had talked in the past of wanting a deterrence force of more than 100,000.

A recent paper by the International Institute for Strategic Studies said a force of 5,000 troops on the ground, a brigade, backed up by a small air component and limited naval elements in the Black Sea would only be able to counter a single local Russian threat or small-scale air or maritime incursion. A force of up to 30,000 troops, backed by long-range artillery, military helicopters, drones and combat engineers with broader air and maritime support, would be able to handle more than one Russian incursion and be “capable of high intensity conflict.”

It would take a deployment of 60,000 to 100,000 troops, IISS said — a force level almost certainly impossible for Europe — to execute sustained high-intensity land combat.

The Wall Street Journal