The first to come up with the idea was French President Emmanuel Macron – long before it was clear that Donald Trump would win the US elections. As early as March 2023, he proposed not only new weapons, but ground troops in the Ukraine to send. They were supposed to relieve Ukrainian front troops in the hinterland, train the Ukrainian army on site, but not fight themselves.
Macron has been heavily criticized for this in France and abroad. At that time nobody was ready to jump to his side. Now against it, reports Le Monde citing confidential sources, secretly negotiated Paris and London through a coalition of states that could send soldiers to Ukraine. And the Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna proposed this as a European response in the event that the United States should withdraw from Europe under Trump.
After Ukraine joined NATO, that would be the next best option. Before Macron and Tsahkna had already Yaroslav Kaczyński in March 2022 called for a NATO peace mission in Ukraine during a train trip to Kiev with the then Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. Kaczyński’s proposal only shook his head at the time, because he was neither coordinated with NATO nor within the Polish government and mixed two categories: NATO troops, who usually come to fight – and peacekeepers, who are normally from the United Nations are sent to separate two enemy camps that agree to such a mission.
In UN jargon, this roughly corresponds to the difference between troops that make peace with a mandate of the UN Security Council (peace enforcement, also against the will of the armed men) and (peace keeping, monitor and observe a ceasefire). There are also missions that intervene briefly to evacuate threatened civilians or prevent massacres. What Kaczynski meant at the time remained unclear. What is currently being negotiated between London and Paris, however, is none of this. At the moment, the UN Security Council cannot send either one or the other to Ukraine because it is completely blocked on this issue.
Collective defense instead of help to defend Ukraine
So far, Ukraine has defended itself alone. Apart from a few secret small western units that exchange intelligence information and train Ukrainian soldiers on western equipment, there are no western troops in Ukraine and the only foreigners who fight on the Ukrainian side are volunteers in Ukrainian uniforms. Since Ukraine is not in the NATO is, it is not defended collectively. However, collective defense is also possible outside of NATO. Art. 51 of the UN Charter even declares the right to individual and collective self-defense to be natural law in the event of an armed attack that can be carried out until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain world peace and international security.
Under international law, there would be nothing standing in the way of sending foreign troops to Ukraine unless the Security Council itself ensures peace there. The North Korean troops in Russia, however, they do not legally – they take part in a war of aggression. This is the logic of the UN Charter: the use of force is fundamentally prohibited, unless a country defends itself alone or with others against an attack. Apart from that, only the Security Council may use violence – if its members agree.
A European ad hoc coalition of the willing under British and French leadership could therefore send troops to Ukraine under international law, either to relieve the Ukrainian army in the hinterland or even to the front. As I said: it would be legal under international law whether it would be politically wise is another question.
Western troops in Ukraine
The Bundeswehr will hardly participate in this for several reasons. Macron’s advance in February 2024 solved the Federal government open rejection from: There would be no soldiers on Ukrainian territory, said Olaf Scholz at the time. He will probably not be Chancellor in a few months, but the hurdles for sending troops to a war zone are much higher in the Federal Republic than in Great Britain and France.
In Britain, this is a privilege of the king, which is de facto exercised by the government. However, there has already been a war in Iraq consensus formed after the government needs Parliament’s approval to deploy troops. After all: Keir Starmer has almost a two-thirds majority in the lower house. Things are even easier in France: the government can simply send troops and only has to inform Parliament within three days. If the stake lasts longer than four months, it needs it Parliament’s consent, which then applies indefinitely. Federal governments can only dream of such conditions, they not only have to expect resistance from their own ranks and from coalition partners (like Gerhard Schröder 2001), but can also be stopped by the Red Robes in Karlsruhe.
In the meantime, the reactions to the Le Monde article on British-French consultations have made it clear how the hare is going: Starmer has refused to deploy British troops in Ukraine, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the same question: „We don’t rule out anything“. There are no red lines for the French government.
The fact that France is still alone does not mean that there will be no western troops in Ukraine. On the contrary. According to Le Monde, the British-French explorations were made out of fear that the Trump government, which will take over the tax in January, could withdraw from Europe and leave Ukraine’s support to the Europeans. Paradoxically, however, the deployment of western (and then also German) troops to Ukraine is more likely if Trump does not withdraw, but is about to freeze the conflict quickly.
How to knock on Trump’s door
Since Trump’s election victory, numerous papers, articles and interviews have been buzzing through the public space of the United States, the authors of which all have one thing in common: they come from Donald Trump’s haze and would like to have an influential job in his future government or in the White House again. In order to attract the attention of those who will put together this Trump team, they go public with their suggestions, which in itself is a clear indication that they are no longer part of the closest circle around Trump.
Some of the military and foreign politicians among them therefore make far-reaching proposals for a „new Ukraine policy “, which the media then interpret as indiscretion about what Trump is supposed to do. Mike Pompeo, former Foreign Minister under Trump, wrote a sensational article in the Wall Street Journal entitled „A Trump Plan for Ukraine “ interpreted the many commentators as an announcement by the future defense minister. It is now clear: Pompeo will not be at all Defense Minister and he didn’t tell us the Trump team’s plans for Ukraine either. The situation is similar with other alleged leaks from the Trump team in the Washington Post and that Wall Street Journal: Nobody revealed Trump’s plans, but knocked on Trump’s door and drew attention to himself.
It was the same with Keith Kellogg, an emeritus general, former Pompeo adviser and secretary of the National Security Council. He wrote (together with an author from the CIA establishment) for the Trump-related Republican „America First Policy Institute“ a Pompeo-like policy paper that also reads like an attempt to knock on Trump’s door. The text is more of a pamphlet against Joe Biden than a plan for a different Ukraine policy, but it is much more interesting than its predecessors because: Kellogg becomes Trumps special envoy for the end of the war of Russia against Ukraine. It can therefore be assumed to a far greater extent than in the other requests to speak that what Kellogg wrote down will in one way or another also be incorporated into Trump’s policy.
More pressure on Ukraine
As of January, the new administration will no longer only put pressure on Russia, but also on Ukraine, to bring it to the negotiating table. First, however, Ukraine should be upgraded to increase the cost of continuing the war for Russia as much as possible. If Russia agrees to a ceasefire and a demilitarized zone, some of the Russia sanctions are to be lifted. If Putin is even ready to sign a peace treaty with Ukraine, all sanctions will disappear. Ukraine, on the other hand, loses the areas that annexed Russia, but only has to recognize this loss de facto: it can only change the territorial status quo diplomatically, otherwise it will lose American support. In a way, that’s the carrot for Ukraine. The carrot for Russia is significantly larger and tastier: the sanctions are lifted and Ukraine is blocked for a certain period of time in NATO.
All of this is still not very detailed and half-baked and partly from an old one Foreign affairs-Article copper-plated, but it is in some essential respects in line with previous leaks from the Trump camp: more pressure on Ukraine, an armistice, NATO membership of Ukraine is put on hold and a demilitarized zone along the ceasefire line is established. And this is exactly where the dog is buried.
UN missions: making peace without weapons
This ceasefire line would currently be around 2300 kilometers long, although it is still open whether the Ukrainian-Belarusian border should not be included due to the Russian troops stationed in Belarus and the country’s participation in the attack on Ukraine. That would be over 3300 kilometers of land border that would have to be monitored. For comparison: monitor in Lebanon 10,000 blue helmets the only 79 km long border between Israel and Lebanon. They cost around half a billion euros a year.
One of the aspects that runs through all current US leaks through Trump’s Ukraine plans is the least possible participation of the United States in the cost of its own peace plans. This means that Europeans should pay not only for the cost of the plan, but also for the armament of Ukraine and for the peacekeeping force that has to monitor the demilitarized zone. This will not only be ensured by the „America first “ policy of the new US government, but also by the Russian attitude.
I cannot imagine the Kremlin agreeing to an armistice that will result in tens of thousands of NATO troops under American leadership being stationed on the Russian western border. Such a demilitarized zone must be guarded from both sides – which means that a peacekeeping force would also have to be stationed in Russian (or Belarusian) territory.
So far, UN blue helmets have always been used in such situations. The UN Security Council decides to use it, the member countries provide quotas and bear the costs. There is often a strange „Burden sharing “ between north and south: poor countries from the south send soldiers who are equipped by richer countries from the north. The equipment is usually cheap and bad, because dead or injured soldiers from the south do not make headlines in the rich north and some of the poor countries from the south (and their soldiers) deserve to report such missions.
In addition, blue helmets should be neutral and not provoke anyone, so they usually have no heavy weapons, no tanks, no air defense, but drive around in clearly visible white jeeps, wear white helmets and hope that nobody will shoot them. And as a rule, they can only use their weapons for self-defense anyway.
For the UNAMIR force, which was in Rwanda during the genocide, this meant that the soldiers had to stand by and watch armed gangs slaughter civilians. As long as the gangs did not attack the UN force, it was doomed to watch. And the gangs knew that, because the Rwandan government that had equipped them enjoyed extensive inspection of the files at the time as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. It will be the same with a Donbass and Crimean peacekeeping force: Russia will know everything about them, can block any change in their mandate in the UN Security Council, and uniforms from all over the world must watch helplessly, like the Russian authorities (as before) the annexed ones Clean and russify areas of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars.
So if you were wondering these days, why the UNIFIL troops in Lebanon did nothing against the missiles that fired Israel and Hezbollah over their heads and remained passive when Hezbollah among them buddle tunnels to the Israeli border or why Israeli tanks rattled unasked in a UNIFIL compound, the answer here is: the blue helmets had no violent task still the means.
You get goosebumps with possible peace plans
So far, there has only been one exception to the rule that blue helmets must be polite, reserved, peaceful and neutral. In 2013, the UN Security Council exceptionally agreed, put together a powerful force, to which some heavy-weight military forces contributed troops, armored vehicles and helicopters, and then gave it the mandate to disarm armed militias in eastern Congo. She started with 3000 men and reached almost 20,000 at the height of her missions. Its core was a „Force Intervention Brigade “ of Tanzanian, Malawian and South African infantrymen who were supported by South African attack helicopters.
In sometimes violent battles, the brigade actually managed to drive the militias away. This had a prize: the part of the civilian population that supported the militias turned against the UN force and a two-digit number of soldiers died in attacks and ambushes by the militias. For the UN, the effort was a kind of revolution: it had moved from peacekeeping to peace enforcement. This was only possible because all the governments that had worked with militias in the Eastern Congo agreed to the operation and none of the countries that provided troops had any interests in the Eastern Congo. So it won’t be that easy in Donbass.
If you transfer this logic to a Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire, you get goose bumps anyway. This would require an enormous number of very well-equipped soldiers with a very robust UN mandate who would consume enormous sums. Your mandate can only come from the UN Security Council, where Russia and China have a veto right and can prevent any extension of the mandate. To avoid a Russian veto, the huge force should not include Americans and possibly not even NATO troops. Elsewhere, soldiers from neutral countries would be hired who have Blauhelm experience and would then be funded and equipped by western donor countries through the UN.
But in a high-tech war with the most modern drones, ballistic missiles and satellite-based cruise missiles, the traditional UN peacekeeping model reaches its limits. Should blue helmets from Bangladesh, Ghana, Rwanda and India observe in their white jeeps – or even prevent – how Russia and Ukraine fight with underwater drones, cruise missiles and laser weapons?
In the interests of both sides, western troops with modern infrastructure would have to be stationed, but they come from countries that do not see the Russian or Ukrainian government as a direct danger: India, China, the Federal Republic, Spain, South Africa. However, they would have to agree to this and the other Europeans, who are most interested in peace, would have to pay the price for it. One of the alleged Trump ideas leaked in the US media even provides for the establishment of such a peacekeeping force outside the UN (Trump doesn’t particularly like the UN), to a certain extent based on the Russia-dominated organization of the Treaty on Collective Security or the (dominated by Nigeria) West African Union. The problem with this: Governments of non-European countries will then hardly be ready to provide troop contingents and some European countries (like the Federal Republic) are not allowed to participate in anything like this without a UN mandate.
Taking seriously what Kellogg and some other Republican thought leaders have proposed, this huge peacekeeping force would have to endure between Ukrainian and Russian troops until Ukraine and Russia agreed on a peace treaty. Depending on its modalities, however, a part may remain in Ukraine for much longer – as a security guarantee for Ukraine. This in turn means that for years to come, some European countries will be much more involved in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine than has been the case so far, in the hot phase of the conflict. If you don’t have goosebumps yet, you can imagine that the ceasefire will be broken and this peacekeeping force will then get between the fronts – similar to UNIFIL in southern Lebanon recently, UNAMIR then in Rwanda or Dutchbat when Srebrenica was conquered by the Bosnian Serbs.
