Responding to the defiant note to international intentions to deploy peacekeeping forces to Ukraine in the event of possible peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv in the current conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a stern warning that any Western troops who landed on Ukrainian territory would be legitimate targets of Russian military force.
Putin rebuffs the Western peacekeeping offers
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday threatened that the Russian army was a legitimate target against any Western forces that might be deployed in Ukraine as a derogatory reaction to an ally’s plan to deploy international peacekeepers after a war settlement is agreed, as indicated by The Moscow Times.
“In case some troops should emerge there, particularly at the moment of the fighting, we act on the assumption that they will be within legitimate range, said Putin at the Eastern Economic Forum in the city of Vladivostok. He claimed that this kind of deployment would not be protecting but an obstacle to the long-term peace.
Coalition is dedicated to a reassurance force
On Thursday, a group of over two dozen countries, led by France and Britain, declared that they were ready to deploy a so-called reassurance force to Ukraine to patrol and enforce any future peace settlement. Ukraine has demanded security guarantees with the assistance of foreign troops to stop Russia from renewing attacks. French President Emmanuel Macron, who was shown on Thursday alongside Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, claimed that 26 countries had already signed the mission, but the number of troops and contributions is still unknown.
He emphasised that the force would not be engaged in the front line but would rather be used to avert any further major aggression. Nonetheless, it is not expected that Russia will approve the Western reassurance force, and this raises the question of whether the plan is a failure before it is even implemented. Moscow has continuously insisted that it will never tolerate any security assurance negotiation without its involvement since it must be part of the negotiations.
Putin refuted the very idea of Western peacekeepers on Friday, saying that any resolution must be able to keep Russia and its neighbor in peace. On the one hand, he claimed that there is no sense in their presence on the land of the Republic of Ukraine; on the other hand, he simply did not see the sense in the fact that decisions are made that will lead to peace, to long-term peace.
Historical violations undermine trust
Ukraine and its Western allies are not convinced. They cite a history of Russian infractions back to the 1994 Memorandum of Budapest. With that post-Soviet agreement, Kyiv was to give up its nuclear weapons, in return, being guaranteed by Russia, the United States, and Britain that its sovereignty and frontiers would be honored.
Individually, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the proposal agreed upon in the Paris summit was definitely not acceptable. He told reporters that: We would consider it a threat to us – the presence of international forces, or any foreign forces, or NATO forces on Ukrainian territory, anywhere along our border. In the frenzy of diplomacy of recent months, Western leaders have levelled charges of Putin buying time as his troops grind on the eastern Ukrainian front.
The rejection of Western offers on peacekeeping by Putin indicates the underlying differences that do not allow for any serious negotiations on the peace. His threats to the international forces highlight the will to keep the pressure of the military forces of Russia and refusal to provide outside security services in Ukraine that can guarantee protection against further aggression and guarantee the stability of the region in the future.