President Trump said on Tuesday that he may be willing to provide air support for European troops on the ground in Ukraine as part of a potential security guarantee, an arrangement that would be unacceptable to Russia.
“When it comes to security, they’re willing to put people on the ground,” Trump told Fox News, referring to European countries. “We’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you talk about by air, because no one has the kind of stuff we have, really, they don’t.”
The president also assured that US troops wouldn’t be deployed to Ukraine. A day earlier, he wouldn’t rule out the idea of putting American boots on the ground in Ukraine.
A group of European countries, led by France and the UK, which calls itself the “Coalition of the Willing,” is pushing for an arrangement where they would deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a potential peace deal. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted a virtual meeting of the group on Tuesday.
Starmer’s office said in a press release on the meeting that the British leader “outlined that Coalition of the Willing planning teams would meet with their US counterparts in the coming days to further strengthen plans to deliver robust security guarantees and prepare for the deployment of a reassurance force if the hostilities ended.”
A day earlier, Russia re-stated its opposition to the idea. “We reiterate our repeatedly expressed position that we deny any scenarios that envisage the deployment of a military contingent to Ukraine with the participation of Nato states, which could lead to an uncontrollable escalation of the conflict with unpredictable consequences,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Axios reported on Tuesday that Trump had agreed with the Europeans that they should provide Ukraine with NATO “Article 5-like” security guarantees without bringing Ukraine into the alliance and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the talks on potential security guarantees.
The Axios report also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin told Trump during the Alaska summit that he was willing to discuss the principle of security guarantees for Ukraine and mentioned China as one of the potential guarantors.
Putin could have been referring to an arrangement included in a draft peace deal in April 2022 under which Ukraine would be a neutral state but would receive security guarantees from several countries, including the US, Britain, China, and Russia. Although all the details weren’t worked out, Russia wanted a deal where all security guarantors would have to agree unanimously on any action, meaning any signatory would have a veto.
