Vladimir Putin has said any western troops placed in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for Russian strikes, upping the stakes as Kyiv’s allies scramble to come up with a convincing offer of post-war support to Ukraine.
Speaking a day after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced still-vague plans for a package of support for Ukraine backed by 26 nations, Putin on Friday said any guarantees that involved boots on the ground would violate Moscow’s long-standing objections to Nato troops in Ukraine.
“Therefore, if some troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction,” Putin told an economic forum in Vladivostok.
While there is little sign that Donald Trump’s efforts to forge a peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine conflict are any closer to success, European leaders have been trying to draw up security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a future deal.
Thursday’s meeting of 35 leaders in Paris was meant to finalise how the guarantees might look and to ask the US for support in implementing them. But many European countries, including Germany, Spain and Italy, have refused to provide troop commitments.
Even among those who are willing to put boots on the ground, initial suggestions earlier this year of a peacekeeping mission that could police a ceasefire line was quickly scaled back to a “reassurance force” that would be stationed far from the front and provide training rather than combat assistance.
On Thursday, Macron announced that 26 nations had pledged to provide post-war security guarantees to Kyiv, which would include a land, sea and air presence. “The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” Macron said, during a joint press conference with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
Speaking in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod on Friday, Zelenskyy suggested the plans would involve a significant western force stationed in the country. “It is important that we are discussing all this … it will definitely be in the thousands, not just a few,” he said, after meeting the European Council president António Costa.
However, Putin knows that western countries are unwilling to go to war over Ukraine, and his threats on Friday look designed to further spook European capitals on the escalatory dangers of committing troops.
Trump has vacillated over what support the US might provide for such a mission. At a meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders the day before he met Putin in Alaska, he appeared to promise some kind of US involvement but many are still blurry on the details.
On Friday, NBC reported that the US could be willing to take the lead monitoring a demilitarised buffer zone around the frontlines after a ceasefire, with ground troops possibly provided by non-Nato countries.
But all such plans are highly hypothetical and rely on Moscow and Kyiv agreeing to a deal to end the war, which does not currently appear to be close. Trump has set a number of deadlines for progress to be made towards peace but all of them have passed with little result. After meeting in Putin in Alaska last month, Trump said he hoped Putin and Zelenskyy would meet one on one, followed by a three-way meeting.
Zelenskyy has long said he is willing to meet with Putin, but the Kremlin has prevaricated and said the conditions are not yet there for a meeting. On Friday, Putin said it would be “practically impossible” to reach an agreement with Ukraine, rendering a meeting pointless, but claimed he was open to meeting anyway, as long as Zelenskyy travelled to Moscow. “I said: I’m ready, please, come, we will definitely provide working conditions and security, a 100% guarantee,’” he said.
“We are ready for any kind of meetings. But we don’t feel that Putin is ready to end this war,” said Zelenskyy on Friday, without directly addressing whether he would be prepared to travel to Moscow.