The French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly considering using the United Nations to deploy European military forces to Ukraine. This was reported by the British Telegraph on Thursday. The plan, primarily pushed by Paris and London, has been repeatedly rejected by Moscow.
France and the UK have been promoting a “coalition of the willing” among EU and NATO member states to deploy peacekeeping forces in Ukraine in the event of a potential peace agreement between Moscow and Kiev.
According to the Telegraph, Macron brought up the idea of a UN-led peace mission during the EU summit on Thursday, in the presence of UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Russia has repeatedly rejected the possibility of Western peacekeeping forces being deployed in Ukraine and has stated that the only way such a mission could be justified is through a UN mandate. However, since a UN mandate would require the approval of the UN Security Council, in which Russia is a permanent member, the prospects for such a mission appear to be “thin”, as the Telegraph put it.
On Thursday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted around 30 leading military officials from the “coalition of the willing” to discuss troop deployment plans and stated that the group has now entered an “operational phase”. He did not provide further details on the number of countries that have expressed willingness to participate or how they plan to implement this plan.
At least two EU and NATO member states, Italy and Hungary, have already rejected the Franco-British proposal. Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni emphasized that the topic of deploying Italian troops in Ukraine had “never been on the agenda” and described the plan as a “very complex, dangerous and ineffective deployment”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov previously argued that the deployment of NATO personnel, even as peacekeeping forces, would constitute a “direct, official and open participation of NATO countries in the war against Russia”. He also accused France and the UK of fueling tensions in Ukraine to hinder attempts to resolve the conflict.
Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, currently a deputy chairman of the National Security Council, warned last week that the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine would trigger a full-scale war between the military alliance and Moscow and accused Macron and Starmer of “being naive”.