British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday that he was ready to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine as a security guarantee for a potential future peace deal with Russia.
“I do not say that lightly. I feel very deeply the responsibility that comes with potentially putting British servicemen and women in harm’s way,” Starmer wrote in The Telegraph.
Starmer also said that any peace deal must include security guarantees from the US. “US support will remain critical, and a US security guarantee is essential for a lasting peace because only the US can deter Putin from attacking again,” he said.
The British leader said he was meeting with President Trump in the coming days and working with the US “to help secure the strong deal we need.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already ruled out the idea of sending US troops to Ukraine as part of any deal and said if a peacekeeping force is deployed, it must be a non-NATO mission.
The Telegraph reported on Monday that Germany is expected to reject Starmer’s proposal for a European troop deployment to Ukraine. The report said there’s a split among European countries, with the UK and France supporting the idea and Poland and Germany less likely to participate.
The Kremlin said there are no serious discussions about a peacekeeping deployment despite all the talk from European leaders. “As of now, no substantial discussions have taken place on this issue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
Peskov also said the idea was “challenging” since it would involve the deployment of troops from NATO countries. “These are NATO member states, so if their troops were deployed in Ukraine, it would present significant complications,” he said.
Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has previously said that Moscow would consider any foreign troops deployed to Ukraine that are not under the authority of the UN Security Council legitimate targets of the Russian military.
Small numbers of British special operations forces have been on the ground in Ukraine throughout Russia’s invasion, but the presence has not been officially acknowledged by London. The Discord leaks revealed that as of March 2023, there were 50 British troops inside Ukraine.
Last year, a German military leak revealed British soldiers were on the ground in Ukraine helping fire US-provided Storm Shadow missiles.
