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UK ready to send troops to Ukraine as European leaders to hold war talks / Photo: © AFP
NYSE - LSE
UK ready to send troops to Ukraine as European leaders to hold war talks
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was prepared to deploy troops to Ukraine if needed, hours before European leaders meet in Paris to address Washington's shock policy shift on the war.
The French presidency has warned that European countries should do more for their collective security, as talks between the United States and Russia loom.
With fears that Europe could be sidelined in negotiations to end the three-year war, Starmer said he was willing to put "our own troops on the ground if necessary".
"Any role in helping to guarantee Ukraine's security is helping to guarantee the security of our continent, and the security of this country," Starmer wrote in the Daily Telegraph late Sunday.
The UK premier is due to joinleaders from Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark at the Paris meeting, which falls ahead of the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Antonio Costa, who heads the European Council representing the European Union's 27 nations, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, and NATO secretary general Mark Rutte will also be present.
The French presidency said the meeting would address "the situation in Ukraine" and "security in Europe".
"Because of the acceleration of the Ukrainian issue, and as a result of what US leaders are saying, there is a need for Europeans to do more, better and in a coherent way, for our collective security," an adviser from President Emmanuel Macron's office said.
US President Donald Trump blindsided Ukraine and its European backers by starting discussions on the war in a call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
On Sunday, Trump said he could meet Putin "very soon".
Speaking from West Palm Beach, Florida, he added that he believed his Russian counterpart genuinely wanted to stop fighting in Ukraine.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appeared to rule out Ukraine joining NATO or retaking all of its territory lost since 2014.
The new US administration has also warned its NATO allies that Europe will no longer be its top security priority and that it may shift forces too as it switches focus to China.
The Kremlin has pushed for negotiations -- set to kick off in Saudi Arabia in the coming days -- to discuss not just the Ukraine war but also broader European security.
That has sparked fears among European nations that Putin could revive demands he floated prior to the 2022 invasion aimed at limiting NATO forces in eastern Europe and US involvement on the continent.
- Russia back in G7 'unimaginable' -
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio played down expectations Sunday of any breakthrough at upcoming talks with Russian officials on ending the war in Ukraine.
"A process towards peace is not a one-meeting thing," he told the CBS network as the Munich Security Conference wrapped up.
"Nothing's been finalised yet," he said, adding that the aim was to seek an opening for a broader conversation that "would include Ukraine and would involve the end of the war".
Rubio is heading to Saudi Arabia on Monday, as part of a Middle East tour he started this weekend in Israel.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he was in the United Arab Emirates for a visit with a "large humanitarian programme". He said on Friday that he had no plans to meet with Russian or US officials there.
Trump last week also said he would "love" to have Russia back in the G7, from which it was suspended in 2014 after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said it was "unimaginable" for Russia to be welcomed back into the G7, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
"The G7 is the group of the most advanced great democracies," he said. Yet Russia "behaves less and less like a democracy and unabashedly attacks other G7 members".
- European 'input' -
Zelensky had on Saturday called for the creation of a European army, arguing the continent could no longer count on Washington.
Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, on Saturday said Europe would not be directly involved in talks on Ukraine, though it would still have an "input".
For Zelensky, there should be "no decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine" or "about Europe without Europe".
Finnish President Alexander Stubb, whose country shares a 1,300-kilometre (800 mile) border with Russia, said on Sunday that talks between the United States and Russia over the Ukraine war must not rewrite European security.
"There's no way in which we should open the door for this Russian fantasy of a new, indivisible security order," he said.
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N. Nilsson--BTZ
