January 22, 2025 - 6:00pm

At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made what may be a final gambit as speculation around negotiations with Russia becomes unavoidable. Addressing European leaders, he provided a reminder that the war in Ukraine, now featuring thousands of North Korean troops, is happening on their doorstep.

Most significantly, Zelensky proceeded to make perhaps his boldest demand in recent months. He declared that not only would Ukraine refuse to reduce the size of its military — one of the Kremlin’s key demands — it would also require a vast international troop presence to keep the peace, citing a “minimum” figure of 200,000 men. Presumably, as bitter divisions about the past and future of Russo-Ukrainian relations remain entrenched, any peace deal will require security assurances from the international community.

Some European leaders have not shied away from the idea of sending peacekeeping troops to a post-war Ukraine. However, concrete commitments have yet to be made. France and Poland, two of Ukraine’s most vocal and active supporters in the European Union, have made encouraging noises about “security guarantees” and imminent negotiations. French President Emmanuel Macron met with his Ukrainian counterpart this month, but no firm plans emerged. It is doubtful that Macron, who is facing domestic chaos, has the political capital to create the commitment Zelensky is seeking. Poland’s Donald Tusk, despite his country’s enthusiastic support for Ukraine and vast defence budget, was quick to pour cold water on any imminent deployment of peacekeeping forces as recently as December.

Europe’s other leaders lag even further behind. Most notably, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s time is nearly up. The sentiment of German voters is shifting on Ukraine, with Scholz coming under fire for the most recent €3 billion aid package. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, embattled domestically and staring down a defence budget crisis, has issued only the vaguest of promises about taking “full part” in any peacekeeping action.

The sheer size of the peacekeeping force Zelensky is floating marks it out as a demand that even he must know is impossible — for perspective, the US-led force in Afghanistan at its peak in the mid-2000s was 130,000-strong. It is also a move the Kremlin will never tolerate. Nonetheless, he is using what has become a tried and tested Ukrainian tactic for extricating contributions from an occasionally intransigent international community: making maximalist demands before celebrating minor gains when leaders eventually contribute something far short of what was initially demanded. This tactic has been effective to secure the delivery of weapons systems such as the US-made ATACMS missile system.

Yet asking other countries to risk lives in Ukraine is a demand of a different order. No European leader looks willing or able to risk the electoral or moral blowback of sacrificing their own young men on the altar of Ukrainian and broader European security. Even though Zelensky’s insistence on a vast peacekeeping force may be a move in the game of shifting pre-negotiation demands — the leader has recently moderated his demand for the military recapture of Russian-occupied Crimea, a problem he now sees being solved “diplomatically” — it risks disappointment at home.

Although a war-weary Ukrainian public is more open to negotiating with Russia than ever before, Zelensky’s maximalist tactics hazard a backlash from disappointed nationalists and veterans. Returning from a war in which they sacrificed their homes, their limbs, and their compatriots to ensure peace, anything seen as short of a durable peace, which international troops may be needed to ensure, could feel like a stab in the back. No matter how unfair it may seem, Ukraine’s President, as the end of the war nears, may be talking himself into an impossible situation in which either the international community or his own public blame him for a failed peace.


Dr. Ian Garner is assistant professor of totalitarian studies at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw. His latest book is Z Generation: Russia’s Fascist Youth (Hurst).

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