Europe divided over troops for Ukraine, after Trump triggers crisis meeting

At a NATO meeting last week, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth made it clear that Europe would have to bear the responsibility for upholding any peace deal negotiated by Washington.

The European allies are now racing to respond to the Trump’s shock announcement of talks with Russia which broke a previous diplomatic isolation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the invasion of sovereign Ukraine three years ago next week.

The Financial Times reported that France had proposed discussing a “reassurance force” that would be stationed behind, not on, a future ceasefire line in Ukraine, according to three officials briefed on the preparations for the meeting.

While Starmer has said he is “ready and willing … [to put] our own troops on the ground if necessary”, other countries are much more reluctant.

“The question now is how peace can be ensured without decisions being made over the heads of the Ukrainian people,” Starmer said before the meeting.

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But Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said: “Nobody is currently considering sending troops to Ukraine. Peace is still very far away and for one reason only: Vladimir Putin.”

He said that any discussion of troop deployments or peacekeepers would “have to consider for what mission, who will comprise it, under what flag, with what mandate”.

Although Poland has significantly increased defence spending since the war began and is usually relatively hawkish, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Warsaw was not prepared to send troops to Ukraine.

“But we will support, also in terms of logistics and political support, countries that will possibly want to provide such guarantees in the future,” Tusk said. “If we Europeans fail to spend big on defence now, we will be forced to spend 10 times more if we don’t prevent a wider war,” he said.

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Both Hungary and Slovakia are also highly unlikely to join given their governments’ close ties with the Kremlin.

Macron has long called for the EU to engage in common borrowing to reduce its reliance on US troops and weaponry, although Germany and the Netherlands have opposed such a move.

While Trump has largely portrayed the war in Ukraine as a battle for territory, Russia has said there can be no end to the fighting until the “root causes” of the conflict have been addressed.

For Moscow, analyst says this is essentially about installing a “neutral” or even pro-Moscow government in Kyiv and eliminating what Putin has said is the threat from NATO to Russian national security.

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