President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine wants security guarantees to be tangible rather than simply “on paper,” when discussing the prospect of a European peacekeeping contingent to be deployed to Ukraine as part of a negotiated settlement with Russia.
“We want security guarantees not on paper, but on the ground, on the water, in the sky, air defense, airplanes, ships,” Zelensky said Wednesday at a news conference in Abu Dhabi.
Zelensky on Saturday urged Europe to band together to create a united army and foreign policy, warning that the days of guaranteed US support for the continent are over.
Last week, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said NATO membership for Ukraine was not a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement with Russia.
On Monday, Zelensky suggested that a NATO-like security guarantee could still be created in Ukraine.
“If we don’t have NATO, then, as I said, figuratively speaking, NATO should be built in Ukraine,” he said, calling for a “million-strong” European army to be deployed to his country.
European leaders are meeting in Paris on Monday to discuss a coordinated response to the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, and Washington’s signal that European security is no longer a priority for the United States.
Before the meeting, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “ready and willing” to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine to enforce a peace deal if necessary.
Zelensky also said that French President Emmanuel Macron had told him that once these talks conclude “in the next few days,” Paris will tell Kyiv more details about a potential contingent of European troops.
