Moscow: NATO allies have agreed that Ukrainian military will have the first role in security guarantees, while European forces may only have the second role once a peace deal is signed, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday. "There is no peace deal or a ceasefire yet [in Ukraine], of course you have to think about what if, if there would be a ceasefire-peace deal, how to make sure that it is lasting, that it is durable, and that is exactly what the French and the British are doing with many in Europe. There are two sides on this, one is that everybody agrees that going forward, the first line of defense and deterrence has to be for the Ukraine armed forces to be able to defend the country," Rutte said at the Keio University in Tokyo.
According to Namibia Press Agency, the NATO chief also noted that there might be other options for Ukraine's security guarantees, not only those proposed by the UK and France. However, if European troops are involved in providing security guarantees, they will play a supporting role, not the first as the British and French hope, he added. "That will be the first line and then of course there are many options to consider when it comes to the second layer of durability of making the peace [in Ukraine] lasting. One is the French-British idea, there could be other options. NATO is advising in all these ideas what is the best way forward but NATO will get more officially involved when there is more of a consensus on what would be the best way forward," Rutte said.
Following the Paris summit of the "Coalition of the Willing" on March 27, French President Emmanuel Macron said that a number of coalition representatives were planning to send "deterrent forces" to Ukraine. As the French leader emphasized, this Franco-British initiative will not replace Ukrainian troops, and the "deterrent forces" will not be peacekeepers. Their goal will be to contain Russia, and they will be deployed in strategic locations pre-determined with the Ukrainians. Macron noted that not everyone agreed with the initiative, but this is not necessary for its implementation.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized on March 6 that Russia did not see any room for compromise on the issue of deploying foreign peacekeepers in Ukraine. As the Russian minister specified, if a foreign contingent is deployed in Ukraine, Western countries will not want to agree on the terms of a peaceful settlement, since this contingent will create "facts on the ground." The Russian Foreign Ministry previously stated that the plans of some EU countries to send "peacekeepers" to Ukraine were a provocative step aimed at maintaining unhealthy illusions among the authorities in Kiev.
Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) previously said that the West would deploy a so-called peacekeeping contingent of about 100,000 people in the country to restore Ukraine's combat capability. The SVR believes that this would be a de facto occupation of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that the deployment of peacekeepers was possible only with the consent of the parties to a particular conflict. According to Peskov, it is premature to talk about peacekeepers in Ukraine.