{"id":43856,"date":"2025-09-04T20:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T20:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/43856\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T20:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T20:19:08","slug":"macron-says-26-states-ready-to-send-troops-in-postwar-reassurance-force-for-ukraine-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/43856\/","title":{"rendered":"Macron says 26 states ready to send troops in postwar \u2018reassurance force\u2019 for Ukraine \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There may be a role for Irish peacekeepers in postwar Ukraine<\/a>, the Taoiseach has said, after 26 nations agreed to take part in a \u201creassurance\u201d force in the event of a peace deal with Russia.<\/p>\n

Miche\u00e1l Martin, who was speaking after a summit of the leaders of the so-called \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d, said he had told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> earlier this week that \u201cIreland is open to participating in an appropriately mandated mission of this kind\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, it remained unclear whether the US would provide the air power that would be crucial to the viability of any such force in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Speaking alongside Mr Zelenskiy in Paris on Thursday, French president Emmanuel Macron said they had talked to US president Donald Trump about the outcome of the meeting, at which 26 countries committed to deploying troops to Ukraine \u201con land, on sea or in the air\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conclusions of this call are simple: in the coming days, we will finalise US support and security guarantees. The United States … has been involved in every stage of the process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"SomeSome European leaders attended the meeting in person, others joined virtually. Photograph: Ludovic Marin\/Pool Photo via AP <\/p>\n

However, a White House official briefing reporters about the call said Mr Trump had urged European states to do more to put pressure on Russia and China \u2013 the biggest buyer of the energy exports that replenish the Kremlin\u2019s war chest.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump emphasised that Europe must stop purchasing Russian oil that is funding the war \u2013 as Russia received \u20ac1.1 billion in fuel sales from the EU in one year,\u201d the official said. <\/p>\n

Mr Trump said late last month that the US was open to playing a \u201cco-ordinating\u201d role to help a European-led security mission in postwar Ukraine, and might provide air support but would not send peacekeepers.<\/p>\n

Russia has said it will never accept western troops in Ukraine and would regard any peacekeeping mission as a hostile \u201cintervention\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a statement, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Dublin criticised the suggestion that Ireland might send peacekeepers to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

He accused the Government of attempting to \u201cinflate its \u2018peacekeeping\u2019 reputation\u2019\u201d and said Dublin \u201cplayed no small role\u201d in escalating the situation in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe embassy of Russia in Ireland pays close attention to this rhetoric and considers it categorically unacceptable and unsustainable,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cRussia categorically rejects any scenarios which envisage the deployment of the western army contingents in Ukraine and may result in an uncontrolled escalation with unpredictable consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

British prime minister Keir Starmer spoke to the Paris summit by video-link and emphasised that the coalition \u201chad an unbreakable pledge to Ukraine, with President Trump\u2019s backing\u201d and it was clear they needed \u201cto go even further\u201d to apply pressure to Russia and secure a cessation of hostilities.<\/p>\n

German government spokesman Stefan Kornelius said European leaders \u201cexpressed the hope that the United States would continue to make a substantial contribution to the joint efforts to support Ukraine, formulate security guarantees and shape a productive diplomatic process\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy emphasised the need for defence guarantees to be legally binding, recalling how US and British security \u201cassurances\u201d given to Kyiv when it handed over its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal to Moscow in 1994 proved to be worthless.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are counting on a US backstop,\u201d Mr Zelenskiy added. \u201cThe exact American contribution will be specified in the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy and other leaders also stressed that the central plank of Ukraine\u2019s future defence should be its own powerful military \u2013 contrary to Kremlin demands that the country\u2019s armed forces should be subject to strict limits on their size and power.<\/p>\n

\u201cA strong Ukrainian army is and will remain the central element of security guarantees. Therefore, it is about the capabilities of our army \u2013 financing, weapons, and defence production,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There may be a role for Irish peacekeepers in postwar Ukraine, the Taoiseach has said, after 26 nations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,6586,13,14,6,19,17,5446,11,12,15,16,5765,5,550,7,8,2264,384,2267],"class_list":{"0":"post-43856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-emmanuel-macron","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-keir-starmer","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-micheal-martin","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-russia","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories","27":"tag-ukraine-crisis","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}