Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Friday that any Western forces deployed to Ukraine would be considered a “legitimate” target for Moscow’s military, a day after Kyiv’s allies pledged to maintain a troop presence should a peace deal be reached.
On Thursday, two dozen countries, led by France and Britain, committed to providing a “reassurance” force on land, at sea and in the air to monitor and enforce any agreement aimed at ending the conflict that Russia ignited in February 2022.
The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and devastated much of eastern and southern Ukraine, marking Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
Kyiv insists that security guarantees backed by Western forces are essential to any deal to prevent Russia from resuming hostilities in the future.
“If some troops appear there, especially now during the fighting, we proceed from the premise that they will be legitimate targets,” Putin said at an economic forum in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok.
He added that the deployment of such a force was not conducive to long-term peace and said Ukraine's closer military ties with the West were among what he calls the “root causes” of the conflict.
Ukraine’s allies have not revealed any specific details of the plan, including how many troops it would involve or how individual countries would contribute.
“We have today 26 countries who have formally committed – some others have not yet taken a position – to deploy as a ‘reassurance force’ troops in Ukraine, or be present on the ground, at sea or in the air,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters Thursday, standing alongside Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy hailed the move: “I think that today, for the first time in a long time, this is the first such serious concrete step.”
The troops would not be deployed “on the front line” but aim to “prevent any new major aggression,” Macron said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed the two sides to open talks on how to end the conflict, though multiple rounds of diplomacy have yielded little beyond prisoner exchanges.
Moscow has stuck to its hard-line demands, calling for Ukraine to cede more territory and completely renounce Western backing. Kyiv has rejected those demands as “old ultimatums.”
Putin said Friday that if a deal could be struck, there would be no need for the troops.
“If decisions are reached that will lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply don’t see the point in their presence on the territory of Ukraine. Because if deals are reached, let no one doubt that Russia will comply with them in full,” he said.
Ukraine and the West point to numerous instances in which Russia has broken agreements on Ukraine, dating back to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a post-Soviet pact that saw Kyiv give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances that Russia and other signatories, including the U.S. and U.K., would respect its independence and territorial integrity and refrain from using force.
Ukraine and many European leaders accuse Putin of paying only lip service to halting his offensive while buying time for his troops to capture more territory.
Earlier this week, Putin said his forces were advancing along the entire front line in eastern and southern Ukraine and that he would continue fighting if a peace deal was not reached.
The extent of U.S. involvement in a possible Western peacekeeping force remains uncertain, and there are divisions within the so-called “coalition of the willing.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for example, urged more pressure Monday but has remained cautious about the scope of involvement.
