U.S. President Donald Trump gave his personal assurance that there will be no American boots on the ground in a post-peace deal Ukraine security operation because that will be the job of European states.
More details about the under-negotiation ‘Coalition of the Willing’ security force to be deployed in Ukraine on a deterrence mission in the event of an agreement with Moscow emerged on Tuesday morning as President Trump gave an absolute guarantee there would be no American troops sent on the ground in Ukraine.
When asked during a Fox News interview whether he would be able to guarantee no American troops would be in harm’s way, President Trump replied: “You have my assurance, and I’m President”.
That is not to say the United States will not be involved, however. President Trump said American forces would play a supporting role to those European nations that are planning to deploy their armed forces to maintain peace. He continued: “There will be some form of security. It can’t be NATO because that’s just not something that would ever, ever happen, it couldn’t.”
American support would particularly take the form of air support. Whether that means combat air patrols and air policing or the deployment of intelligence assets to feed information to European forces on the ground is presently unclear. Nevertheless, President Trump said: “When it comes to security [the Europeans are] willing to put people on the ground, we’re willing to help them with things, especially… by air because nobody has the kind of stuff we have.”
The comments follow other remarks by President Trump while sitting with European leaders at the White House on Monday, when he revealed for the first time that “President Putin agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine”.
President Trump said this was a “very significant step” and that it was now time to decide “who will do what”, but, regardless, reassured that “I am optimistic that collectively we can reach an agreement that will deter any future aggression towards Ukraine”.
“I think the European nations are going to take a lot of the burden, we’re going to help them, we’re going to make it very secure,” the president said.
As previously reported, earlier in the day, President Trump said in the Oval Office on security guarantees while sitting beside Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky:
“We’re going to make sure that if there is peace, there’s going to be peace long term” and said there would be discussions on Western security forces in Ukraine — meaning boots on the ground or planes in the air — “maybe later today”.
President Trump said the “first line of defence” for Ukraine going forward would be its European partners and their militaries because “they’re there, they are Europe”, but added, “when it comes to security, there will be a lot of help.”
Tellingly, he said, “We’ll help them out also, we’ll be involved.”
Later, President Trump was more direct, saying: “We will give them very good protection, very good security, that’s part of it. And the [European leaders] who are waiting for us, I think they’re very like-minded. They want to help out.”
While several European nations have expressed support for the idea of a peacekeeping security force in Ukraine post-peace deal scenario to deter and future Russian re-invasion, beyond the coalition core of the United Kingdom and France, most have been completely unwilling to actually commit without reassurances from the United States that it would act as the ultimate security guarantor.
The model preferred appears to be that of European boots on the ground, but promises that America would ride to the rescue if the war restarted and European armies started taking casualties. Whether this is the direction of travel for security force talks with the United States is unclear, but along with concerns over Ukraine becoming a NATO member, an American promise creates a potentially nuclear tripwire in Eastern Europe that Washington wants to avoid.
The United Kingdom is perhaps the least reluctant of all, and even before the talks of the past five days, made clear it is ready to commit its own military to Ukraine as soon as a peace deal is signed. British Defence Minister John Healey of the left-wing government of Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday morning that: “In the circumstances of a ceasefire, we’re ready to put UK boots on the ground in Ukraine… They are ready to go, they’re ready to act from day one”.
Those troops would be ready to “defend themselves if attacked” by Russian forces, he added.
Progress or not, President Trump’s new comments on security cooperation appear to have done little to encourage Germany — the EU’s largest economy but a long-time recalcitrant on defence spending — to commit to the so-called coalition, at least in a front-line role.
Chairman of the Bundestag’s Defence Committee Thomas Röwekamp said, per NTV, that he does not think the prospect is “impossible”, but “rather likely that German soldiers will serve in Ukraine”.
However, the chairman added, “I consider it unlikely that we will establish a brigade in Ukraine like the one in Lithuania – or deploy a similarly large operation as there.” Options for German troops include remote peace agreement monitoring and training Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine, he said.
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