Is the 'coalition of the willing' going to work?

British military chiefs will head to Ukraine within days to advance plans for a peacekeeping force.

Keir Starmer has laid out plans for a "coalition of the willing": a UK/French-led mission of multiple nations that would uphold a potential ceasefire deal with Russia. That coalition is "ready to operationalise" a peacekeeping force if a deal is agreed, Starmer said yesterday, after hosting military officials in London all week.

Emmanuel Macron also hosted leaders from about 30 countries in Paris yesterday to firm up what this "coalition of the willing" could do. And in a "change in language", said The i Paper, the French president said after the meeting that a "reassurance force" from several European nations would be positioned in "strategic towns" and bases in Ukraine to "act as a deterrent against potential Russian aggression". And "question marks remain" over whether the US will provide vital security guarantees for such a force.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say?

Starmer's "moral clarity on support for Kyiv" has "contributed to a sense of European solidarity" in the face of US retreat, said The Independent.

But that doesn't erase the "very real complexities" of this nascent plan. It's not clear which countries would commit troops – the EU has its own "disagreements and shadings of commitment, from Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia at one end, to France at the other". Italy isn't expected to take part; Giorgia Meloni described deploying European troops to Ukraine as "risky, complex and ineffective". The "mismatch" between Nato's European members and a potential EU force also "needs to be resolved as a matter of urgency".

"If you are talking about deploying troops to Ukraine, it is almost like they have joined Nato already," said Lord West, former First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. "I don't think Russia will be very happy about this," he told The i Paper.

Indeed, the plan has already attracted "open hostility" in Moscow, said Con Coughlin, The Telegraph's defence editor. And the Russian president's "dismissive attitude" to ceasefire proposals so far has exposed the coalition's "utter vacuity". One of Vladimir Putin's "key demands" to Donald Trump was for a "total ban on all international aid to Ukraine" – which would surely include peacekeepers. It is "almost inconceivable" that Europe could deploy a force to Ukraine without Russian agreement.

Starmer "got ahead of himself with talk of boots on the ground", a UK military source told The Telegraph. That's why we now hear more about "jets and vessels" – air and sea support – which don't need to be based in Ukraine. This is "all political theatre".

But air and sea support would still require US intelligence and cover, and there is "no indication of that being on offer", said Andrew Marr in The New Statesman. This "seemingly independent" European plan "leans entirely" on Washington, where it is also being "derided". Putting 10,000 Western troops into Ukraine would "pretty much involve the entire British army" – which is "smaller than the US Marine Corps" – and could provoke direct confrontation with Russia, which would be "disastrous" for our depleted forces. Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff called the coalition "a posture and a pose".

What next?

US officials have been holding talks with Russian and Ukrainian representatives in Saudi Arabia, aimed at progress towards a 30-day ceasefire. The White House has set a target date of 20 April: Easter Sunday in both Western and Orthodox churches. It is not "remotely possible" for a plan of support for Ukraine to be drawn up in that time, one senior Army source told The Telegraph.

Starmer has pledged to give MPs a vote on deploying British peacekeepers to Ukraine "on a long-term basis". He also suggested that Putin should be given a deadline to sign a deal, accusing the Russian president of "playing games and playing for time".

But the Kremlin has also said "time and time again" that Russia will not sign any deal that would allow Nato troops inside Ukraine, said Marr. Yesterday, Russia's foreign ministry claimed France and the UK were "hatching plans for military intervention in Ukraine" under the guise of a peacekeeping mission. "Our country stands categorically against this scenario," said spokesperson Maria Zakharova, "which risks a direct confrontation between Russia and Nato."