French President Emmanuel Macron said after European leaders rallied around Ukraine at a summit in London that France and Britain were proposing a one-month truce in Ukraine “in the air, at sea and on energy infrastructure.”
Such a move “would allow proof of the good will of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin if he commits to a truce,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France Inter radio on Monday.
“It’s then that real peace negotiations would start. We want a solid peace and a durable peace,” he added, emphasising that such a truce would not involve the withdrawal of Russian troops on the ground.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday that European leaders had agreed to draw up a Ukraine peace plan to present to the United States, without going into details.
Macron said in an interview published in Le Figaro late on Sunday that under the plan, European ground troops would only be deployed to Ukraine in a second phase.
For Ukraine, any agreement must include security guarantees.
“We need peace, not endless war. And that is why we say that security guarantees are the key to this,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky in a message posted Monday afternoon on the Ukranian presidency’s official site.
European Union leaders will meet for an extraordinary summit on Thursday, March 6, to discuss additional support for Ukraine, European security guarantees and how to pay for European defence needs.
Meanwhile US President Donald Trump warned that his country cannot support Ukraine much longer.
Trump reposted a news article that quoted Zelenskyy as saying the end of Russia’s war on Ukraine is “very, very far away,” which Trump bemoaned as “the worst statement that could have been made by Zelenskyy.”
“America will not put up with it for much longer! It is what I was saying, this guy doesn’t want there to be Peace as long as he has America’s backing and, Europe, in the meeting they had with Zelenskyy, stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the U.S.,” Trump said on his proprietary social media website.
“Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia. What are they thinking?” he added. With agency reports
