Why Europe Should Put Boots on the Ground in Ukraine | Opinion

With President Donald Trump having failed to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office—as he had promised—Europe faces a profound, and admittedly difficult, choice: either take a decisive role in securing peace in Ukraine, with all the risks it may entail, or fade into geopolitical irrelevance.

Any deal Ukraine makes with Russia to end the war, which has taken many tens of thousands of lives, has to be guaranteed by military force. Trump has shown that he will not step in—at least on Ukraine's side. That leaves the European Union and its allies as the only viable force with the political will to save Ukraine. As British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, securing a lasting peace in Ukraine is "essential if we are to deter Putin from further aggression in the future."

Is there, then, a route to lasting peace in Ukraine? Yes. Ukraine can invite European troops (not under a NATO banner) onto its territory, to protect its sovereignty and keep peace on the borders of Europe. This has been done before. The classic example being the U.S.-UK-French deployment in West Berlin during the Cold War.

One has to underline that the troops should not be on a peacekeeping mission, nor neutral in their allegiance. We've been there and done that: Ukraine had the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission from 2014 to 2022, whose main purpose was to observe and report on the security situation in Ukraine in an impartial and objective manner.

The force was not meant to provide deterrence, and Russia maintained its troops in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk even before launching its full-scale invasion in 2022.

We should not repeat the same mistakes. Europe is capable of stationing a robust rapid-reaction force within Ukraine without NATO involvement, as long as it finds the political will. The declaration by Starmer is a good sign, as he stated that he is "ready and willing" to put British troops on the ground to help guarantee its security as part of a peace deal.

Protecting Ukraine would also signal that the EU is serious about its defence and demonstrate to the wavering United States that the EU is a capable partner. If Europeans want to avoid war in Europe, deter threats, and fundamentally matter in today's world, they must be prepared to engage directly in Ukraine.

Foreign involvement in the war is not something new. The West has been supporting the Ukrainian defense without involvement of its troops for three years. In that time, Russia has brought North Korean troops into the war, launched intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the city of Dnipro and committed war crimes throughout the territory it holds, according me many sources. That is why Europe must now help Ukrainians by providing weapons to force Russia to the negotiating table and then secure a peace agreement through its military presence.

Russia has never indicated it would make concessions to Ukraine without being forced to. Dimitri Suslov, an advisor to the Kremlin, stated in an interview in January that "Ukraine must either agree to all Russian demands or cease to exist geographically." Meanwhile, Europeans are already discussing the idea of resuming Russian gas imports—an idea which shows European weakness. Instead, gas imports should be used as an economic lever toward ending the war.

Europe must learn from past mistakes. Establishing a fragile peace without solid security guarantees is merely a recipe for a future war—one in which Europeans, particularly people of the Baltic nations, would be the first to fight. Indeed, the former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said, "From the perspective of frontline countries, it may seem like nobody else will understand these dangers until their parliaments' windows are blown in by a T-72. By that time, I think it will probably be too late to negotiate a joint EU defense budget."

Ukrainians chose to fight because the alternative was to cease existing as a nation. They are paying the ultimate price with their lives. Europe must now realize the existential threat that Russia poses and take the risks involved in guaranteeing peace. By failing to act, the European Union risks being remembered as the bloc that failed because it refused to fight for itself and its values. European boots on the ground in Ukraine would aid Ukraine and help prevent Europe fading into total irrelevance.

Viktoriia Lapa is a Lecturer in Law at Bocconi University, Milan, an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Constitutional Studies & Democratic Development, Bologna, and Assistant Professor at Alfred Nobel University in Dnipro, Ukraine.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.