Canadian PM floats the possibility of ‘presence of troops’ from allied countries to protect Ukraine against Russia.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has expressed support for Ukraine’s calls for security guarantees as part of any peace deal with Russia, including the possibility of deploying troops to the Eastern European country.
During a visit to Kyiv, where he met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday, Carney said a group of Ukraine’s Western allies, known as the Coalition of the Willing, is working with the United States to bolster Ukrainian defences.
“In Canada’s judgment, it is not realistic that the only security guarantee could be the strength of the Ukrainian Armed Forces … that needs to be buttressed and reinforced,” Carney told reporters.
“We are working through – with our allies in Coalition of the Willing and with Ukraine – the modalities of those security guarantees on land, in the air and the sea, and I would not exclude the presence of troops.”
Three and a half years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, US President Donald Trump is leading efforts to end the war.
For its part, Kyiv is working with its European allies to secure post-war guarantees to protect Ukraine from the possibility of renewed Russian attacks, which Trump has also expressed openness towards.
On Sunday, Carney joined Zelenskyy for a ceremony in central Kyiv to mark Ukrainian Independence Day, which was also attended by Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg.
“We are all working to ensure that the end of this war would mean the guarantee of peace for Ukraine, so that neither war nor the threat of war are left for our children to inherit,” Zelenskyy told a crowd of dignitaries.
The Ukrainian president said he wants future security guarantees as part of a potential peace deal to be as close as possible to NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on one member state as an attack against all.
Zelenskyy and Carney signed an agreement on drone co-production. The Canadian prime minister said Ukraine would receive more than $1 billion Canadian ($723 million) in military aid from a previously announced package next month.
Carney also called for an end to the fighting in Ukraine during his visit.
“We need a cessation of hostilities. We need a ceasefire. We can call it a ceasefire, a truce, an armistice. That’s necessary to stop the killing,” Carney told reporters.
With the war already having claimed tens of thousands of lives, hopes for a ceasefire on the ground, however, remain dim as Kyiv and Moscow continue to exchange fire.
On Sunday, Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out a drone attack on the nuclear power plant in Kursk near the Ukrainian border, igniting a fire.
Local authorities, meanwhile, said a Russian drone strike killed a 47-year-old woman in the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk.
After a push by Trump to broker a Ukraine-Russia summit, hopes for peace further dimmed when Russia on Friday ruled out any immediate meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy.
But on Sunday, Zelenskyy said the “format of talks between leaders is the most effective way forward”, renewing calls for a bilateral summit with Putin.
The Russian president met with Trump in Anchorage, Alaska in the US earlier this month, but the talks did not produce an immediate breakthrough to end the war.
On Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused European leaders of undermining efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
“We want peace in Ukraine. US President Trump also wants peace in Ukraine. The reaction to the Anchorage meeting, the visit of these European representatives to Washington, and their subsequent actions indicate that they do not want peace,” Lavrov said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
