“It’s a minimum. Otherwise, it’s nothing”
“200,000 is a minimum. It’s a minimum. Otherwise, it’s nothing,” the Ukrainian president declared on Tuesday during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), in an interview shared on the presidency’s website the next day. This is the first time that a senior Ukrainian official has publicly mentioned the number of such a contingent, although this project has been discussed behind the scenes for several months between kyiv and its Western allies.
French President Emmanuel Macron had put forward the idea of stationing Western troops in Ukraine to oversee a possible ceasefire agreement with Russia, which launched the invasion of its Ukrainian neighbor three years ago and occupies around 20 % of its territory.
What will Donald Trump do?
For weeks, speculation about possible talks to end the conflict has been increasing, against a backdrop of questions about the position that the new American president Donald Trump will adopt, while the United States is the main provider of aid military and financial in kyiv.
Donald Trump on Tuesday deemed new sanctions against Russia “likely” if Moscow does not negotiate an end to the war against Ukraine. He further indicated that the United States would “look into” continuing military aid to kyiv. Even before his inauguration on Monday, Donald Trump affirmed that he was preparing a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to “put an end” to this conflict.
-“Putin does not want to end the war”
“I am therefore not surprised that the United States has contacts with Putin” but Ukraine must be “a priority” for the American president, said Volodymyr Zelensky. “Because we are allies of the United States. We are the victim. Putin is the occupier. And we didn’t start the war, he started it,” he argued.
Belgium
