British soldiers deployed to Ukraine to keep the peace must be ready to fight Vladimir Putin’s army, says an ex-Nato chief.
Sir Richard Shirreff, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of Nato in Europe, stressed that UK and French forces needed to be heavily equipped to “overmatch” Russian troops.
Sir Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron have announced that Europe’s two leading military powers will set up military “hubs” in Ukraine to keep the peace if the war, launched by Putin in February 2022, ends.
So far little detail has emerged of how many soldiers, air crew and sailors this would involve and with what equipment.
But Sir Richard told LBC Radio: “It’s got to be the right capability, the right numbers and the means.
“The assumption must be anyway that Russia will break any ceasefire.
“So, such a force has got to be prepared to fight.”
He added: “The bottom line is this can’t be a lightly armed blue beret type peace corp or UN-style.
“It’s got to be prepared to enforce peace and enforcing peace means being prepared to overmatch the Russians and that means also being prepared to fight them if necessary.”
Pressed by presenter Nick Ferrari whether this could see British troops firing on Russian soldiers in Ukraine, he added, admitting it made him nervous: “We could.”
The British and French military deployments would help to train Ukrainian troops and protect stocks of weaponry, aimed at deterring future Russian aggression, it was revealed following a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing in Paris.
The US has meanwhile signalled it will provide a security guarantee to the European-led peacekeeping efforts, something which Donald Trump has previously appeared reluctant to do.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff said the president “strongly stands behind” a security guarantee, though details of how this would work were not revealed.
But Putin has so far showed little, or no sign, that he is prepared to accept the latest peace proposals which have been drawn up by Kyiv, the US and Europe, and he has opposed the idea of western troops in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that the agreements reached at the talks in Paris show how serious Kyiv’s Coalition of the Willing partners are willing to work to ensure security in Ukraine.
He explained that details still had to be worked out on how monitoring would work after a peace deal is clinched and how Ukraine’s army would be supported and funded.
Mr Zelensky and Donald Trump have highlighted progress in peace moves but the major stumbling block still remains over Ukraine giving up territory in the Donetsk province of the eastern Donbas region.
One proposal is to create a demilitarised or free economic zone in the east of the wartorn country,
But it is far from clear that Putin would accept such a compromise move.
Russian forces are still gradually seizing more territory in eastern Ukraine, despite suffering heavy losses.
More than a million Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded in Putin’s war, which has so far lasted nearly four years, with similarly high casualties among Ukrainian troops.
