Zelensky: Ukraine needs at least 200 thousand European soldiers

Ukraine needs hundreds of thousands of European peacekeepers to ensure the country's security after the end of the military conflict with Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky said at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"From all Europeans? 200,000 is the minimum. This is the minimum, otherwise nothing will happen," Reuters quoted him as saying.

This is approximately equal to the size of the French armed forces as of 2020, the agency notes.

As the Financial Times noted, officially the European members of NATO have a total of 1.9 million troops, but in reality it will be difficult for them to send more than 300 thousand soldiers to the conflict zone, which will take months to train.

Speaking in Davos, Zelensky said that one of the possible issues during the settlement negotiations would be "the reduction of the Ukrainian army at times."

"The fastest way (for Russia) — to put pressure on the United States so that Ukraine is not in NATO, and on all allies, so that they put pressure on us to reduce the army by five times," Zelensky said and ruled out that Ukraine would agree to this requirement.

According to him, the number of the Ukrainian army now stands at 880 thousand soldiers and officers.

The idea of sending the European military to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire has been discussed for several months, The Washington Post wrote that, according to analysts and officials, tens of thousands of soldiers would need to be deployed in the country. Reuters reported that it could go from 40 thousand to 100 thousand peacekeepers.

The Kremlin stated that the possible deployment of European peacekeepers on the Ukraine should be discussed during the negotiations, but there is no need to "get ahead of ourselves". At the same time, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia was not satisfied with the proposals of the US President Donald Trump's team to deploy "British and European peacekeeping forces" to the neighboring country, RBC reminds.