Europe is far from talking about sending troops to Ukraine

Friedrich Merz. Photo: dpa

After the summit in Albania, where EU leaders met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Europe has no plans to send troops to Ukraine. According to him, the main priority is to achieve a ceasefire with Russia.

This was reported by Reuters.

Merz stressed that any future peaceful settlement should be based on a clear format of negotiations and provide potential security guarantees for Ukraine.

«The next step should be to clearly define the format of peace talks, as well as what security guarantees Ukraine may need at some point,» Friedrich Merz said.

As for the possible involvement of European troops, Merz stressed that such talks are premature.

«There are no grounds to talk (about troops, — note) at the moment, we are far from it. We want the shooting to stop, the killings to stop... these are the issues we are dealing with now, and no others,» added Friedrich Merz.

Earlier, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that a new package of sanctions against Russia could be adopted on 20 May at a meeting of the Council of the European Union in Brussels.

As a reminder, France has proposed deploying peacekeeping forces in central Ukraine, presumably along the Dnipro River. In addition, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer discussed the possibility of deploying a peacekeeping force of more than 10,000 troops to Ukraine during an online meeting of the «Coalition of the Willing».