European countries in Paris on Thursday agreed to ramp up rather than lift sanctions on Russia over its war against Ukraine, as the UK and France began sketching out plans to send a “reassurance” force after any peace.
French President Emmanuel Macron hosted the meeting of Ukraine’s European allies and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the latest effort to agree on a coordinated policy after US President Donald Trump shocked Europe by opening direct talks with the Kremlin.
The US said it has made tentative progress toward a ceasefire to end the three-year conflict sparked by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Photo: EPA-EFE
However, a peace deal appears far off and the meeting of more than two dozen European heads of state and government also underlined differences within the “coalition of the willing,” with not all states signing onto the French-British plan to deploy troops after the war.
“He really wants to divide Europe and America, Putin really wants that,” Zelenskiy said after the summit, adding that Kyiv wants Washington to be “stronger” toward the Kremlin.
“Everybody understood and understands that today Russia does not want any kind of peace,” he added.
There appeared to be consensus around the table at the Elysee Palace that sanctions imposed against Russia should not be weakened, and rather intensified, until there is peace.
“There was complete clarity that now is not the time for the lifting of sanctions, quite the contrary — what we discussed is how we can increase sanctions to support the US initiative to bring Russia to the table,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said alongside Zelenskiy.
In a separate briefing, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said lifting sanctions would be a “grave mistake” and “makes no sense” without a truce.
Zelenskiy criticised “very dangerous signals” on that possibility, pointing especially to Saudi Arabia.
As well as boosting Ukraine’s own armed forces, a key pillar of ensuring security and preventing further Russian invasions could be to deploy European troops to Ukraine, although until now it has been far from clear how this could happen.
Macron said after the summit that France and Britain were leading efforts to send a “reassurance force” to Ukraine after any end to the fighting.
“It does not have unanimity today, but we do not need unanimity to do this,” he said, adding that a Franco-British delegation would head to Ukraine in the coming days for talks.
The members of such a force would not be peacekeepers, deployed on the front line or any kind of substitute for the Ukrainian army, Macron said.
Not all of Ukraine’s European allies would be represented in the force, with some states not “having the capacity” and some reluctant due to the “political context,” he added.
The Franco-British delegation would begin talks over where such a force could be deployed.
It would have the “character of deterrence against any potential Russian aggression,” he said.
Macron added that the summit agreed that he and Starmer would together “co-pilot” Europe’s ‘coalition of action’ for [a] stable and durable peace.”
However, Zelenskiy struck a more downbeat note, saying that “there are many questions, [but] so far, there are few answers” about the force, who would lead it and what it can do.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has long made clear her reserves over the troop deployment plan, said she hoped the US would be involved in the next European meeting on Ukraine and repeated Rome’s refusal to send troops to defend any peace deal.
However, Starmer, hailing the summit, said: “This is Europe mobilizing together behind the peace process on a scale that we haven’t seen for decades, backed by partners from around the world.”
Ukraine has offered through the US a 30-day ceasefire, but Russia has so far failed to respond, with the European allies growing all the more impatient.
Underscoring how far apart the sides remain, Ukraine on Thursday accused Russia of violating a US-brokered agreement to refrain from targeting energy infrastructure with an artillery strike that caused a power outage in the city of Kherson.
The Ukrainian army has rejected Russian claims that it targeted energy sites.
“I think there should be a reaction from the US,” Zelenskiy said.
Energy facilities had been damaged in the strike and it was “unclear who is monitoring” the pledges to halt such strikes, he said.
Thursday’s meeting comes after the White House said Russia and Ukraine had agreed on the contours of a possible ceasefire in the Black Sea, during parallel talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia.
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