European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were meeting in Paris on Thursday to agree security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a peace accord with Russia to end the three-and-a-half-year war sparked by Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
The guarantees by the so-called coalition of the willing, which remain under wraps but are expected to include ramped-up training for the Ukrainian army and deployment of troops by some European states, have angered Russia.
They form part of a push led by French President Emmanuel Macron to show that Europe can act independently of Washington after President Donald Trump upended US foreign policy after just months in office.
The summit, co-chaired by Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, aims to firm up plans on security guarantees for Ukraine if or when there is a ceasefire, and get a clearer picture of US involvement.
Russia has heaped scorn on such assurances, and President Vladimir Putin himself has said Moscow is willing to “resolve all our tasks militarily” in the absence of an agreement. He has also indicated that he does not want to see European troops in post-war Ukraine.
The coalition of the willing includes around 30 nations backing Ukraine, mainly European but also Canada, Australia and Japan.
The United States is being represented by US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. The summit will be followed by phone talks with Trump, to begin at 1200 GMT, and then a 1300 GMT press conference.
– ‘Not up to them’ –
“Europe is ready, for the first time with this level of commitment and intensity,” Macron said Wednesday as he welcomed Zelensky, adding that preparatory work on the guarantees was complete and the Thursday summit would aim to endorse them “politically”.
But there appears to be no agreement on a course of action, with the nature of the guarantees sketchy and some countries, notably Germany, reluctant to commit to sending troops.
Until a ceasefire is reached, “there will certainly be no deployment of troops in Ukraine, even after that”, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on television.
Germany intends to contribute to strengthening Ukraine’s air defence and equipping its ground forces, government sources told AFP.
Frustration has been building in the over what leaders say is Putin’s unwillingness to strike a deal to end the conflict.
On Wednesday, Zelensky said “we have not yet seen any signs from Russia that they want to end the war”.
Hours before the talks were due to begin, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow would not consider the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine “in any format”.
“It’s not for them to decide,” NATO chief Mark Rutte shot back Thursday.
– ‘Alliance between Europe and US’ –
In an interview with French magazine Le Point published ahead of the summit, Zelensky said European security guarantees “might not be enough” to prevent Putin from starting a new war.
“We need an alliance between Europe and the United States,” he said.
The gathering takes place after Putin’s high-profile trips to China and the United States.
Speaking Wednesday in Beijing, where he attended a massive military parade alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin hailed his forces’ progress in Ukraine, adding that Russian troops were advancing on “all fronts”.
In unprecedented scenes, Putin was pictured shaking hands and chatting with Xi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as they walked down a red carpet by Tiananmen Square.
Last month Trump rolled out a red carpet for Putin in Alaska but those talks yielded no breakthrough.
Trump has indicated the United States could back up any European peacekeeping plan, but would not deploy US soldiers to Ukraine.
– ‘War criminal’ –
European leaders have been growing exasperated with Putin, sharpening their criticism and warning that the Ukraine war could last for many more months.
“Putin is a war criminal,” Merz said on X on Tuesday.
“He is perhaps the most severe war criminal of our time that we see on a large scale. We must be clear about how to deal with war criminals: leniency is out of place here.”
Macron last month called Putin “an ogre at our gates”, while his Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Russia might continue to wage its war against Ukraine “for as long as it can”.
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© Agence France-Presse
