European allies step up plans for Ukraine stabilization : NPR
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speak with media journalists at the Recovery Ukraine conference at the Nuvola Congress Center in Rome on Thursday.
Gregorio Borgia / AP
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Gregorio Borgia / AP
Rome – The countries prepared to provide troops for a post -dryer force in Ukraine have agreed to set up a head office in Paris for rapid deployment after the end of hostilities in the Russian war against its neighbor. An American delegation was present for the first time at a group meeting on Thursday.
Lieutenant-general retired Kellogg, the special envoy of American president Donald Trump for Ukraine and Russia, was on site for the meeting, which took place on the sidelines of the fourth annual conference on the recovery of Ukraine held in Rome.
The Republican senator Lindsey Graham and the Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal, who co -pacarraine a new bill on sanctions against Russia, partly calls for a price of 500% on goods imported from countries which continue to buy Russian oil.
French president Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer joined the meeting by videoconference from Great Britain, where Macron is visiting state.
In a press release, the members of the coalition said they had agreed from a headquarters of Paris for the first year of the Force, which was to be known as a multinational Ukraine force, then run it in London, with plans for a coordination cell in kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.
The force, of which the thirty members were not identified, should provide logistics experts and the formation to reconstitute the armed forces of Ukraine, secure the sky of Ukraine and the Black Sea. No specific commitment was announced and Blumenthal and Graham excluded any plan for American troops on the ground.
Starmer said that “reinsurance force” is essential to offer security in Europe.
“This is why the coalition of the will is to ensure that we have a future force which can be deployed following a cease-fire to dissuade the Russian aggression for the years to come,” he said in a statement.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she was proud that Washington’s participation in the coalition meeting, the sixth since the start of the war, happened in Rome and said that it was a “fundamental” sign of Western unity to support kyiv.
“I agree that we must also increase the pressure on Moscow to achieve a cease-fire as soon as possible that will finally make the place of diplomacy,” she said. “But as always, we must remember that this can only happen thanks to deterrence, this can only happen thanks to deterrence, as anyone who does not understand perfectly.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for his part, also thanked Kellogg, Graham and Blumenthal for their attendance, as well as recent Trump signs supporting Ukraine.
He repeated a comment that Blumenthal had made during the closed -door meeting when he noted the number of countries willing to support kyiv on the ground. Blumenthal said that the image of so many leaders “was worth more than 1,000 words”.
“The aid packages announced for Ukraine and very decisive signals on the sanctions – I believe that these words are not empty, and the image, as our American partner said today, talks about itself,” said Zelenskyy.
