Washington, Mar 29 (UNI) European leaders agree that sending troops to Ukraine to provide security guarantees would be impossible without support of the United States, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson said in an interview out on Friday.
"This is one of the conclusions that we made," Jonson told Le Figaro.
He said that discussions on sending troops was at the preliminary stage because Ukraine and Russia had not reached a peace deal.
"But one of the important aspects of our discussion is to define strict rules of engagement for such a mission. Clarification is still needed," Jonson said.
He said that the Europeans wanted NATO's Supreme Allied Commander to assess the impact of such a mission on the alliance and that the US committed in one way or another.
"All these conditions are important for the European military presence in Ukraine," Jonson said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said after hosting the summit of the "coalition of the willing" in Paris on Thursday that a number of countries wanted to send troops to Ukraine as "deterrent forces." He said that the UK-French initiative would be neither a replacement for Ukrainian troops nor a peacekeeping force. The goal would be to deter Russia by stationing troops in the strategic locations.
On March 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that proposals on the possible presence of peacekeepers in Ukraine looked like an attempt to rescue the Ukrainian authorities.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said last year that the West would deploy a so-called peacekeeping contingent of about 100,000 people in Ukraine to restore its combat capability. The SVR called this scenario a de facto occupation of Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that peacekeepers could only be deployed with the consent of the parties involved and that it was premature to talk about sending peacekeepers to Ukraine.
UNI SPUTNIK GNK