\u201cIf some troops appear there, especially now during the fighting, we proceed from the premise that they will be legitimate targets,\u201d Putin said at an economic forum in the far eastern city of Vladivostok.<\/p>\n
He added the deployment of such a force was not conducive to long-term peace and said Ukraine\u2019s closer military ties with the West were one of what he calls the \u201croot causes\u201d of the conflict.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s allies have not revealed any specific details of the plan, including how many troops it would involve and how specific countries would contribute.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have today 26 countries who have formally committed \u2013 some others have not yet taken a position \u2013 to deploy as a \u2018reassurance force\u2019 troops in Ukraine, or be present on the ground, in the sea, or in the air,\u201d French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters on Thursday, standing alongside Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy hailed the move: \u201cI think that today, for the first time in a long time, this is the first such serious concrete step.\u201d<\/p>\n
The troops would not be deployed \u201con the front line\u201d but aim to \u201cprevent any new major aggression\u201d, the French President said.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has forced Russia and Ukraine to open talks on how to end the conflict, though multiple rounds of diplomacy have failed to yield anything more than prisoner exchanges.<\/p>\n
Moscow has stuck to its hardline demands, calling for Ukraine to cede even more territory and completely renounce Western backing.<\/p>\n
Kyiv has ruled those out as \u201cold ultimatums\u201d.<\/p>\n
Putin said Friday that if a deal could be struck, there was no need for the troops.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the prospect of a Western peacekeeping force is a significant step towards preventing future aggression. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIf decisions are reached that will lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply don\u2019t see the point in their presence on the territory of Ukraine. Because if deals are reached, let no one doubt that Russia will comply with them in full,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ukraine and the West point to a long list of times Russia has broken agreements on Ukraine, dating to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a post-Soviet agreement that saw Kyiv give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances that Russia and other signatories, including the US and Britain, would respect its independence and territorial integrity and refrain from the use of force.<\/p>\n
Ukraine and many leaders in Europe have accused Putin of paying only lip service to the idea of halting his offensive and playing for time while his troops capture more territory.<\/p>\n
Putin earlier this week said his troops were advancing across the entire front line in eastern and southern Ukraine and that he would continue to fight if a peace deal was not reached.<\/p>\n
The extent of any US involvement in a possible Western peacekeeping force remains uncertain and there are also divisions within the \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d.<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for instance, urged more pressure on Monday but has remained cautious about the scope of involvement.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf some troops appear there, especially now during the fighting, we proceed from the premise that they will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,3458,8227,5195,3465,3468,8224,8231,8223,4999,42,78,8228,8219,8226,43,2892,4494,2572,8217,8221,3048,8225,8220,1361,8229,40,38,41,39,8230,3460,3461,8216,8222,8218,3457,1533,6730],"class_list":["post-6320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-allies","tag-army","tag-be","tag-committed","tag-deal","tag-deployed","tag-event","tag-forces","tag-friday","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-kyivs","tag-legitimate","tag-moscows","tag-news","tag-peace","tag-presence","tag-president","tag-putin","tag-russian","tag-said","tag-target","tag-targets","tag-that","tag-they","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-troop","tag-troops","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir","tag-warned","tag-warns","tag-western","tag-will","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}