Paris, France/Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Reuters
European leaders meeting in Paris on Monday for emergency talks called for higher spending to ramp up the continent’s defence capabilities but remained split on the idea of deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine to back up any peace deal.
The Paris meeting was called by French President Emmanuel Macron after US leader Donald Trump arranged bilateral peace talks with Russia, excluding European allies and Ukraine from negotiations to end the war that are scheduled to begin in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer as he arrives for a meeting with European leaders on Ukraine and European security at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, on 17th February, 2025. PICTURE: Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes.
European officials have been left stunned and flat-footed by the Trump administration’s moves on Ukraine, Russia and European defence in recent days, and must now confront the reality of a future with less US protection.
The US decision to go it alone with Russia has sparked a realisation among European nations that they will have to do more to ensure Ukraine’s security.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who ahead of the meeting said he was willing to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, on Monday evening said there must be a US security commitment for European countries to put boots on the ground. He said it was too early to say how many British troops he would be willing to deploy.
A peacekeeping force would not only raise the risk of a direct confrontation with Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but also stretch European armies, whose arsenals have been depleted by supplying Ukraine and decades of relative peace.
There are also difficult questions about how some European nations, whose public finances are groaning, will pay for such expanded military commitments.
Defence spending
Starmer’s push for peacekeepers appeared to draw a dividing line between participants in Paris.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said there could be no peace deal without Ukraine’s consent, but said talk of a German peacekeeping mission in Ukraine was “highly inappropriate” without any peace deal in hand. Instead, he said European nations spending over 2% of their gross domestic product on defense should not be blocked by European Union budget rules.
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni said she, too, was against the peacekeeping plan, according to sources in her office.
“It was useful to discuss today the various hypotheses on the table. The one that foresees the deployment of European soldiers in Ukraine seems to me to be the most complex and perhaps the least effective, and on this too I voiced Italy’s doubts,” she said, according to the sources.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was open to discussing troop deployments and that Europe must boost its support for Ukraine while ramping up domestic defence spending.
“Russia is threatening all of Europe now, unfortunately,” Frederiksen told reporters.
Scholz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the EU’s stringent fiscal rules should be loosened to allow more spending on defence without countries falling foul of the EU’s deficit rules.
Tusk said there was “confirmation…that defence spending will no longer be treated as excessive spending, so we will not be at risk of the excessive deficit procedure and all its unpleasant consequences.”
US Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, General Keith Kellogg attends the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Munich, Germany, on 15th February, 2025. PICTURE: Boris Roessler/Pool via Reuters/File photo
US and Russia to meet in Saudi Arabia
Ahead of US-led negotiations to end the war, Russia has ruled out conceding territory, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed the US-Russia talks taking place without him.
Trump stunned Ukraine and European allies last week when he announced he had called Russian President Vladimir Putin, long ostracised by the West, to discuss ending the war without consulting them.
Senior US and Russian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. The highest-level in-person discussions between the nations in years are meant to precede a meeting between Trump and Putin.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Riyadh as well as national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, also part of the US negotiating team.
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On the Russian side, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov were due to take part, the Kremlin said.
But there were signs of differences of approach.
US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the conversation would determine if the Russians were serious about peace talks, “about perhaps if that first step is even possible”. For its part, the Kremlin said the talks would focus on “restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations”.
Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy but who is not in Saudi Arabia, said he would visit Ukraine for three days from Wednesday.
Asked whether the US would provide a security guarantee for any European peacekeepers, Kellogg said: “I’ve been with President Trump, and the policy has always been: You take no options off the table.”
– With ANDREW MACASKILL in London, UK.
