Why exactly is Sir Keir Starmer spending so much time assembling an international peacekeeping force for Ukraine? Doubtless he is sincere in his support, and genuinely believes that he is helping Kyiv.
But in reality there is no path whatsoever towards forcing Vladimir Putin to accept European peacekeepers – nor for that matter in persuading Donald Trump to back them.
Starmer is feeding Volodymyr Zelensky with more myths and empty words: this will waste time, stall talks and cost lives.
From the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022 Britain – and Boris Johnson in particular – took a strong lead in calling for Ukraine to resist the Russian invaders.
We, and many Europeans, promised in various ways to provide whatever Ukraine needed until they achieved victory.
It is now clear that those promises were totally inadequate. It was the US, not Europe, which provided the lion’s share of military equipment sent to Ukraine – including strategically vital rocket artillery, battlefield cruise missiles and air defence systems.
Yet even as the Biden administration was sending arms, Washington was always far more clear-eyed than Europe about the war’s inevitable end.
Even as early as March 2022, in a barnstorming speech of support for Kyiv in Warsaw, Joe Biden defined the US objective as putting “Ukraine in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”
Three years and hundreds of thousands of lost lives later, Russia and the US are now at that negotiating table.
Trump has refused to countenance security guarantees for Ukraine after a peace settlement. This has left the Europeans to play catch-up. Zelensky has latched onto Starmer’s idea of a European peacekeeping force on the ground as an alternative to a distant America.
But keeping Nato out of Ukraine was the single most fundamental reason why Putin invaded in 2022. Why on earth does Starmer, or his fellow coalition cheerleaders in Canada and France, imagine that the Kremlin would accept Nato troops on the ground in any guise?
Our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has demanded that Putin accept a Ukraine ceasefire. But in truth, unless and until he is defeated in the field, Putin has a veto over any peacekeeping force – and he’s already used it. The answer is an emphatic, hard “nyet”.
Starmer’s other problem is that any European force in Ukraine will have to be “backstopped” – a nicely euphemistic term – by the Americans.
What that means in practice is that the US will have to commit to getting British, French and Canadian troops out of trouble with overwhelming airpower should they find themselves in the path of a future advancing Russian steamroller.
Or put another way: Washington will have to step in and fight a war that Europeans have failed to prevent and possibly played a part in provoking. That kind of open-ended commitment to European security – alternatively known as World War Three – is precisely what the Trump administration is adamant about avoiding.
Many Europeans – including at least two of Nato’s front-line states that used to be a part of Russia – agree that putting European boots on the ground in Ukraine would be a terrible idea.
The leaders of Finland – which shares a thousand kilometre border with Russia – and Poland have both refused. Germany, whose troops have spent a fair amount of time in Ukraine over the last century, is also reluctant.
And soon after a conference call with many other Western leaders on Sunday, Italy’s fiery Prime Minister Georgia Meloni reiterated her position that an Italian contingent in Ukraine was “not foreseen.”
Europeans, then, seem unwilling to join Starmer’s “coalition of the willing.” But that’s not even the plan’s major problem. In order to assemble a peacekeeping force, there first has to be a peace to keep.
That is currently being brokered directly between Trump and Putin. Though the Russian army and economy have taken a beating over three years of war, Putin remains militarily undefeated and economically uncrushed.
Therefore whatever armistice terms are finally agreed – and that process is set to take far longer than the 30-day ceasefire currently being negotiated – will have to be with Putin’s agreement.
Lammy in Parliament recently denounced Putin as “a KGB agent who operates by deception” and who “draws on a Tsarist tradition of imperialism and authoritarianism.” And who could argue?
But when it comes to the hard and ugly business of dealing with Putin’s obfuscations and lies, Britain is merely shouting slogans from the sidelines. Trump has chosen a different line. He has refused the virtue signalling of Europeans and is going eyeball-to-eyeball with Putin over real nuts-and-bolts demands.
Unlike Starmer, Trump sees the world as it is, rather than what he might like it to be. The plan for European peacekeepers, whatever its possible merits and however much the Ukrainians may like it, is likely to be one of the first items flying out of the window when serious talks begin.
Why exactly is Sir Keir Starmer spending so much time assembling an international peacekeeping force for Ukraine? Doubtless he is sincere in his support, and genuinely believes that he is helping Kyiv.
But in reality there is no path whatsoever towards forcing Vladimir Putin to accept European peacekeepers – nor for that matter in persuading Donald Trump to back them.
Starmer is feeding Volodymyr Zelensky with more myths and empty words: this will waste time, stall talks and cost lives.
From the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022 Britain – and Boris Johnson in particular – took a strong lead in calling for Ukraine to resist the Russian invaders.
We, and many Europeans, promised in various ways to provide whatever Ukraine needed until they achieved victory.
It is now clear that those promises were totally inadequate. It was the US, not Europe, which provided the lion’s share of military equipment sent to Ukraine – including strategically vital rocket artillery, battlefield cruise missiles and air defence systems.
Yet even as the Biden administration was sending arms, Washington was always far more clear-eyed than Europe about the war’s inevitable end.
Even as early as March 2022, in a barnstorming speech of support for Kyiv in Warsaw, Joe Biden defined the US objective as putting “Ukraine in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”
Three years and hundreds of thousands of lost lives later, Russia and the US are now at that negotiating table.
Trump has refused to countenance security guarantees for Ukraine after a peace settlement. This has left the Europeans to play catch-up. Zelensky has latched onto Starmer’s idea of a European peacekeeping force on the ground as an alternative to a distant America.
But keeping Nato out of Ukraine was the single most fundamental reason why Putin invaded in 2022. Why on earth does Starmer, or his fellow coalition cheerleaders in Canada and France, imagine that the Kremlin would accept Nato troops on the ground in any guise?
Our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has demanded that Putin accept a Ukraine ceasefire. But in truth, unless and until he is defeated in the field, Putin has a veto over any peacekeeping force – and he’s already used it. The answer is an emphatic, hard “nyet”.
Starmer’s other problem is that any European force in Ukraine will have to be “backstopped” – a nicely euphemistic term – by the Americans.
What that means in practice is that the US will have to commit to getting British, French and Canadian troops out of trouble with overwhelming airpower should they find themselves in the path of a future advancing Russian steamroller.
Or put another way: Washington will have to step in and fight a war that Europeans have failed to prevent and possibly played a part in provoking. That kind of open-ended commitment to European security – alternatively known as World War Three – is precisely what the Trump administration is adamant about avoiding.
Many Europeans – including at least two of Nato’s front-line states that used to be a part of Russia – agree that putting European boots on the ground in Ukraine would be a terrible idea.
The leaders of Finland – which shares a thousand kilometre border with Russia – and Poland have both refused. Germany, whose troops have spent a fair amount of time in Ukraine over the last century, is also reluctant.
And soon after a conference call with many other Western leaders on Sunday, Italy’s fiery Prime Minister Georgia Meloni reiterated her position that an Italian contingent in Ukraine was “not foreseen.”
Europeans, then, seem unwilling to join Starmer’s “coalition of the willing.” But that’s not even the plan’s major problem. In order to assemble a peacekeeping force, there first has to be a peace to keep.
That is currently being brokered directly between Trump and Putin. Though the Russian army and economy have taken a beating over three years of war, Putin remains militarily undefeated and economically uncrushed.
Therefore whatever armistice terms are finally agreed – and that process is set to take far longer than the 30-day ceasefire currently being negotiated – will have to be with Putin’s agreement.
Lammy in Parliament recently denounced Putin as “a KGB agent who operates by deception” and who “draws on a Tsarist tradition of imperialism and authoritarianism.” And who could argue?
But when it comes to the hard and ugly business of dealing with Putin’s obfuscations and lies, Britain is merely shouting slogans from the sidelines. Trump has chosen a different line. He has refused the virtue signalling of Europeans and is going eyeball-to-eyeball with Putin over real nuts-and-bolts demands.
Unlike Starmer, Trump sees the world as it is, rather than what he might like it to be. The plan for European peacekeepers, whatever its possible merits and however much the Ukrainians may like it, is likely to be one of the first items flying out of the window when serious talks begin.