European troops must be ready to fight if they are sent to guard any future peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, a senior aide to Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
“We don’t need a mere presence to showcase that Europe is present,” Igor Zhovkva, a top Ukrainian negotiator, said ahead of an international summit in Paris.
“It’s not the amount which matters… it’s also their readiness to fight, their readiness to defend, their readiness to be equipped, and their readiness to understand that Ukraine is an inevitable part of European security,” he said.
The comments came ahead of a visit by Mr Zelensky to Paris on Wednesday, where he is scheduled to meet Emmanuel Macron later in the day.
Keir Starmer has spearheaded plans to organise a ‘coalition of the willing’, mainly compromising European countries, that would be prepared to contribute soldiers to monitor a peace deal.
Russia has said it will not consider any peace deal which involved European troops being sent to Ukraine.
Kyiv on Wednesday accused Moscow of playing games as it demanded a significant number of sanctions be lifted before a ceasefire in the Black Sea comes into effect.
“We demonstrated we are very serious, the Americans understood…Russia is just playing games,” said Andriy Yermak, Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff.
Brussels said it had refused to lift EU sanctions on Russia until Moscow completely withdrew its forces from Ukraine, dealing a blow to Donald Trump’s hopes to strike a quick ceasefire deal between Kyiv and the Kremlin.
Both sides continued trading allegations of breaking a ceasefire agreement covering strikes against energy infrastructure, which was confirmed by the US on Tuesday following talks in Saudi Arabia.
Overnight, Russia said it had taken down nine drones, including two over the Black Sea. It also said Ukraine tried to attack a gas storage facility in Russian-occupied Crimea and energy infrastructure in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions. Ukraine denied this.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military reported 117 Russian drone attacks overnight. Local officials said the city of Kryvyi Rih had been hit by the biggest drone attack it has faced yet.
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