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Defence secretary John Healey has said the government is “ready to put UK boots on the ground” in Ukraine if a ceasefire is secured, as US President Donald Trump prepares to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Anchorage.
Healey, who was on Friday attending an event to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the allied victory over Japan in the second world war, said the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” was ready to go on “day one” of a ceasefire to help secure peace in Ukraine.
“In the circumstances of a ceasefire we’re ready to put UK boots on the ground in Ukraine,” Healey told the BBC.
“They are ready to go, they’re ready to act from day one.”
Healey said that questions over what UK forces in Ukraine would do in the event of a renewed Russian attack were “hypotheticals” but that it was a principle that “any British forces have the right to defend themselves if attacked”.
He emphasised, however, that the main objective of the Coalition of the Willing alliance that the UK and France have tried to assemble was to help provide reassurance to Ukraine while helping rebuild their armed forces to provide future deterrence to Russia.
“In the end the strongest deterrence against Russia reinvading or regrouping and relaunching their aggression against Ukraine is the strength of Ukraine,” Healey said.
Healey’s comments come as Trump is preparing to meet the Russian president in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday for the first face-to-face top-level talks since the full-scale invasion was launched by Moscow in February 2022.
The UK and France assembled the CoW partly in response to concerns earlier this year that Trump was preparing to withdraw military aid and support from Kyiv, demonstrating that European powers were prepared to step up if a peace deal could be secured.
Starmer told Trump this week in calls ahead of the meeting that European forces would take on the “lion’s share” of peacekeeping duties, as leaders sought reassurances from Trump that the US would help with so-called “security guarantees”.
Three European officials said earlier this week that Trump had said he was open to these guarantees as long as they were on a non-Nato basis, though Washington has been unclear about what this means in practice.
There is little expectation of US forces being deployed to Ukraine but the European powers are often dependent on the US for logistical and intelligence support. Trump’s concerns regarding Nato are understood to centre on fears it could be sucked into a confrontation with Russia.
A joint French-UK headquarters for the CoW was established in Paris last month. But the grouping, while enjoying some support from other European leaders, has faced scepticism from Germany and other countries, including a reticence to have western European forces too close to the front lines with Russia even in the event of a peace deal.
Healey said “over 200 military planners from 30 nations had worked together in recent months on “detailed planning for the point of a ceasefire”.
He added that multinational forces would support “safe skies and safe seas for Ukraine” but that the emphasis was on rebuilding “Ukrainian forces for themselves”.
The White House has been more conciliatory with Europe over military matters after the majority of Nato members pledged to raise defence and security related spending to as much as 5 per cent of GDP over the next decade.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the UK armed forces, warned on Thursday that the west had to remain “assertive in every domain” with Russia.
Radakin’s rare intervention comes as Putin has framed the war domestically at least partly as being against Nato expansion, though more countries have joined the alliance since 2022, including Finland which shares a border with Russia.
Radakin said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that while Russia was “dangerous” he did not want the west to be “cowed”, pointing out its substantially greater military and economic strength.
“I am wary of too great an emphasis on homeland defence, or a fortress Europe,” Radakin said. “We need to defend forward. Russia has more cause to be fearful of an alliance of 32 than the other way around.”
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