Foreign troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets, says Putin

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday thousands of foreign troops could be deployed to his country under post-war security guarantees, but Russian leader Vladimir Putin said Moscow would regard them as legitimate targets to attack.

Their comments underlined the gulf between Kyiv and Moscow as Western pessimism mounts over prospects for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine quickly, with US President Donald Trump expressing growing frustration with Moscow by saying Russia appeared “lost” to “deepest, darkest China.” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that 26 countries had pledged to provide post-war security guarantees to Ukraine, including an international force on land and sea and in the air.

Macron initially said those countries would deploy to Ukraine, but later said some of them would provide guarantees while remaining outside Ukraine, for example by helping to train and equip Kyiv’s forces.

“It is important that we are discussing all this (security guarantees) ... it will definitely be in the thousands (of troops), not just a few,” Zelensky said after meeting Antonio Costa, a senior European Union official, in western Ukraine.

Russia has long said one of its reasons for going to war in Ukraine was to prevent NATO from admitting Kyiv as a member and placing its forces in Ukraine.

“Therefore, if some troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction,” Putin told an economic forum in Russia’s far eastern city of Vladivostok.

“And if decisions are reached that lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply do not see any sense in their presence on the territory of Ukraine, full stop,” the Russian president added.

Trump’s efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine have included holding talks with Putin, but he has been frustrated at his inability to resolve the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War Two.

He said this week he was “very disappointed” in Putin, and made clear on Friday that he was also upset by moves by Russia and India to improve ties with China as Beijing pushes a new world order. Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi both met Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump wrote in a social media post accompanying a photo of the three leaders together at Xi’s summit in China.

Trump said on Thursday he would speak to Putin again in the near future. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Friday that he had no doubt that a meeting could be organised very quickly.

As Western pessimism mounts over peace prospects for Ukraine, the United States and Europe are discussing imposing more sanctions on Russia over the war.

“We are ready to do more, we are working with the US and other like-minded partners to increase our pressure, through further sanctions, direct and secondary sanctions. More economic measures to push Russia to stop this war,” Costa said after meeting Zelensky.

Costa, who is President of the European Council, said without giving details that “the work is starting in Brussels on the new sanctions package and a European team is travelling to Washington D.C. to work with our American friends.” In Vladivostok on Friday, Putin denied that Russia’s economy was stagnating, despite a report from the central bank that suggests it is technically in recession.

Ukraine’s allies are preparing a new set of sanctions against Russia as part of a campaign to pressure Putin to end the war on Ukraine, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Friday, “Mr. Putin is the cause of this war. He’s the reason for the killing - he is not going to dictate the terms of the peace,” he told a televised news conference.

Zelensky urged Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Friday to cut off oil supplies from Russia, which uses the export revenues to fuel its three-and-a-half year-old war.

The European Union has banned most imports of oil from Russia in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but Slovakia and Hungary have been exempted from the embargo to give them time to find alternative supplies.

This has led to friction between Bratislava and Kyiv, which hosts a stretch of the Druzhba pipeline carrying Russian oil to the two landlocked EU countries.

“Russian oil, like Russian gas, has no future,” Zelensky said, during a joint press conference with Fico.

He added that, while Ukraine will continue striking Russian energy infrastructure, “no one is going to just sit in the dark”.

Fico, who met Russian President Vladimir Putin in China earlier this week, was meeting Zelensky, whom he regularly criticises, in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod, close to Slovakia and Hungary.

The Slovak PM said he saw a quick end to the war, but admitted that he and Zelensky had “different opinions” on that.

Agence France-Presse