France Insists on the Entry of Peacekeeping Troops Into Ukraine
Possible location of Western peacekeepers in Ukraine. X/ @front_ukrainian
February 26, 2025 Hour: 9:08 am
‘Trump has agreed that the Europeans can guarantee the peace agreement once it is reached,’ FM Barrot said.
France believes it achieved “three very important results” during President Emmanuel Macron’s meeting with Donald Trump regarding future peace negotiations on Ukraine, particularly the prospect of the U.S. president convincing Russia to accept the principle of deploying peacekeeping troops.
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“This is a shift we have been hoping for over the past ten years,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot emphasized on Wednesday. In an interview with the France 2 channel, he recalled that, until now, Russian President Vladimir Putin had rejected the idea of Western troops being present in Ukraine.
“Trump has agreed that the Europeans can guarantee the peace agreement once it is reached, that these guarantees can materialize in military capabilities in Ukraine, and that the United States can support this effort,” Barrot said, referring to Macron’s visit to Washington on Monday.
For the head of French diplomacy, securing these guarantees for Ukraine through the presence of peacekeeping troops—a scenario that France and the United Kingdom have been working on together—is “fundamental,” given that Russia violated the 2014 Minsk agreements, which lacked such guarantees.
When asked whether Washington will definitely support this deployment, Barrot responded that “in any case, the U.S. will provide support, and in any case, the presence of military capabilities is something Russia has always rejected.” That is why he considers it particularly significant that Trump has stated that if he brings Putin to the negotiating table, Russia will accept the presence of foreign troops in Ukraine.
The other two “results” that Macron, in Barrot’s view, achieved in Washington were Volodymyr Zelensky’s upcoming visit to the U.S. to meet with Trump and the fact that the U.S. president has “distinguished between a truce, a ceasefire, and a lasting peace.”
On Wednesday, Macron held a videoconference with European Union leaders to brief them on his meeting with Trump. This virtual meeting takes place ahead of the special summit addressing the Ukrainian crisis, scheduled for March 6 in Brussels.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
