NATO nations to deploy troops in Ukraine after peace deal – secretary-general
The NATO nations will deploy troops to Ukraine once the conflict with Russia ends, Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said.
Moscow has maintained that sending in Western military units would only escalate the conflict, and could lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. However, Kiev’s European backers have continuously lobbied to send in soldiers as a means of guaranteeing Ukraine’s security.
“Some European allies have announced that they will deploy troops to Ukraine after a deal is reached,” the NATO Secretary-General said in a speech to the Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday. “Troops on the ground, jets in the air, ships on the Black Sea. The United States will be the backstop.”
In the meantime, the US-led military bloc is “assisting, equipping and training the Ukrainian Armed Forces” and sending “billions of dollars’ worth of critical US military hardware” to Ukraine, Rutte said.
Russia has long warned that it would treat any NATO soldiers sent to Ukraine as legitimate targets for strikes.
“The deployment of Western military units, facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure in Ukraine is unacceptable to us and will be considered a foreign intervention that poses a direct threat to Russia’s security,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists on Monday.
Moscow has long seen the conflict as a NATO proxy war against Russia, carried out using Western materiel and Ukrainian manpower.
Ukraine’s ambition to join the US-led military bloc, as well as NATO’s expansion towards Russia’s borders are among the fundamental causes of the current conflict, according to Moscow.
One of Russia’s key peace demands is that Ukraine embrace neutrality and give up its NATO membership ambitions, a goal that Moscow says it is ready to continue pursuing militarily in the event that Kiev refuses to compromise.
