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European leaders should be prepared to send military forces to Ukraine to underpin any peace deal engineered by Donald Trump between Kyiv and Moscow, Estonia’s foreign minister has said.
Margus Tsahkna told the Financial Times that the best security guarantee for Ukraine was Nato membership, as requested by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But if the US was opposed to inviting Kyiv to join the military alliance, Europe would have to step in with troop deployments once the fighting was over to deter further Russian aggression.
“If we are talking about real security guarantees, it means that there will be a just peace. Then we are talking about Nato membership,” said Tsahkna. “But without the US it is impossible. And then we are talking about any form [of guarantee] in the meaning of boots on the ground.”
Trump has vowed to bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine once he takes office, prompting fears he could impose an unfair deal on Kyiv by threatening to withdraw US military support or abandon Ukraine altogether. Several Trump allies have called for Europe to take on the burden of propping up Ukraine.
Tsahkna said Trump’s victory in the US presidential election had accelerated discussions among Kyiv’s allies about how to shore up Ukraine given its recent battlefield losses, as well as pressure Moscow to come to the negotiating table and ensure that any ceasefire was sustainable.
“There are lots of talks and lots of communications between each other in Europe and also with the Trump team and the administration.”
The minister said it would be “really, really, really complicated” for Europeans to provide security guarantees to Ukraine without US backing, not least because Nato could ultimately be dragged into any clash with Russian forces.
Estonia has long been one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine and critical of other allies’ reservations over supplying weaponry to Kyiv that Moscow claims would be a cause for escalation. Tallinn also fears that if Russia prevails in Ukraine, the Baltic states will be next in Vladimir Putin’s drive to re-establish Moscow’s sphere of influence in the former Soviet space.
Some analysts believe any European effort to shore up Ukraine could be organised by a coalition of the willing, starting with Poland and the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a defence group that includes the Nordic and Baltic states and the Netherlands. These countries, who are meeting in Tallinn next month, are Ukraine’s staunchest supporters and account for two-thirds of European bilateral military aid to Kyiv.
It would be essential for France and Germany also to come on board, Tsahkna said. Germany is Ukraine’s second-largest donor of military aid after the US.
Britain had the “opportunity and all the responsibility to take the leadership” of Europe’s efforts to bolster Ukraine’s security, while Poland was also playing a very active part in the discussions, he added. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk last week said he would engage in talks with the US, Nato and European allies on how to guarantee Ukraine’s security.
Tsahkna said he did not believe Trump would abandon Nato because it was not in America’s political or economic interests to leave Europe at the mercy of an imperialist Russia. But the Europeans would have to show they were willing to invest more in their own defence.
Estonia spends the equivalent of 3.4 per cent of its GDP on defence and wants Nato to agree a minimum spending level of 2.5 per cent, up from 2 per cent, at the alliance’s summit in The Hague in June next year.
Europe lacked weapons stockpiles and needed to do more to expand defence industrial capacity, the minister said.
“But what we do have is money. We have lots of money. I do not believe those governments who say they cannot ask for more from their people because we have done in Estonia,” Tsahkna said, referring to taxes rises enacted by Tallinn specifically to fund higher defence spending.
With Ukraine now seen as Nato’s first line of defence, it was Europe’s security architecture that could be reshaped in the coming months and not just Ukraine’s fate, he said.
“We just cannot wait on whatever the US decides.”