Vladimir Putin has said any western troops placed in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for Russian strikes, upping the stakes as Kyiv’s allies scramble to come up with a convincing offer of postwar support to Ukraine.

Speaking a day after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced still-vague plans for a package of support for Ukraine backed by 26 nations, Putin on Friday said any guarantees that involved boots on the ground would violate Moscow’s longstanding objections to Nato troops in Ukraine.

“Therefore, if some troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction,” Putin told an economic forum in Vladivostok.

While there is little sign that Donald Trump’s efforts to forge a peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine conflict are any closer to success, European leaders have been trying to draw up security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a future deal.

Thursday’s meeting of 35 leaders in Paris was meant to finalise how the guarantees could look and to ask the US for support in implementing them. But many European countries, including Germany, Spain and Italy, have refused to provide troop commitments.

Even among those who are willing to deploy troops, initial suggestions earlier this year of a peacekeeping mission that could police a ceasefire line was quickly scaled back to a “reassurance force” that would be stationed far from the front and provide training rather than combat assistance.

On Thursday, Macron announced that 26 nations had pledged to provide postwar security guarantees to Kyiv, which would include a land, sea and air presence. “The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” Macron said, during a joint press conference with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Élysée Palace in Paris.

Speaking in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod on Friday, Zelenskyy suggested the plans would involve a significant western force stationed in the country. “It is important that we are discussing all this … it will definitely be in the thousands, not just a few,” he said, after meeting the European Council president, António Costa.

However, Putin knows that western countries are unwilling to go to war over Ukraine, and his threats on Friday look designed to further spook European capitals on the escalatory dangers of committing troops.

Trump has vacillated over what support the US may provide for such a mission. At a meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders the day before he met Putin in Alaska last month, he appeared to promise some kind of US involvement but many are still blurry on the details.

On Friday, NBC reported that the US could be willing to take the lead monitoring a demilitarised buffer zone around the frontlines after a ceasefire, with ground troops possibly provided by non-Nato countries.

But all such plans are highly hypothetical and rely on Moscow and Kyiv agreeing to a deal to end the war, which does not currently appear to be close. Trump has set a number of deadlines for progress to be made towards peace but all of them have passed with little result. After meeting Putin in Alaska, Trump said he hoped the Russian president and Zelenskyy would meet one on one, followed by a three-way meeting.

Zelenskyy has long said he is willing to meet Putin, but the Kremlin has prevaricated and said the conditions are not yet there for a meeting. On Friday, Putin said it would be “practically impossible” to reach an agreement with Ukraine, rendering a meeting pointless, but claimed he was open to meeting anyway, as long as Zelenskyy travelled to Moscow. “I said: I’m ready, please, come, we will definitely provide working conditions and security, a 100% guarantee,’” he said.

“We are ready for any kind of meetings. But we don’t feel that Putin is ready to end this war,” said Zelenskyy on Friday, without directly addressing whether he would be prepared to travel to Moscow.

Close Trump jokes with tech CEOs that he thought Ukraine war would be easy to solve

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US president Donald Trump has urged European leaders to cease buying Russian oil, which he argued is helping Moscow fund its war in Ukraine.

He also emphasised that Europe “must place economic pressure on China for funding Russia’s war efforts”, a White House official said.

Trump made the remarks during a call with the “Coalition of the Willing”, a group of 30 European nations led by French president Emmanuel Macron, which gathered in Paris yesterday to discuss further security guarantees for Ukraine.

Following the meeting, which was attended by the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Macron said that 26 countries – including the UK and France – have pledged to deploy troops in Ukraine as a “reassurance force” in the event of a ceasefire.

Despite Zelensky expressing willingness to talk, a ceasefire agreement is not currently on the table, and it remains unclear whether Russian president Vladimir Putin will agree to a cessation of hostilities. He said on Wednesday that in the absence of a deal, Russia will have to achieve its goals “by military means”.

Kyiv: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that any foreign troops deployed to Ukraine before a peace agreement has been signed would be considered “legitimate targets” by Moscow’s forces.

Putin’s comments came hours after European leaders repledged their commitment to a potential peacekeeping force, a prospect that Moscow has repeatedly described as “unacceptable.”

“If any troops appear there, especially now while fighting is ongoing, we assume that they will be legitimate targets,” he said during a panel at the Eastern Economic Forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.

Putin also dismissed the idea of peacekeeping forces in Ukraine after a final peace deal, saying “no one should doubt” that Moscow would comply with a treaty to halt its 3½-year full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

He said that security guarantees would be needed for both Russia and Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov later said that Moscow would need “legally binding documents” to outline such agreements. “Of course, you can’t just take anybody’s word for something,” he told Russian news outlet Argumenty i Fakty.

Putin’s comments follow remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday that 26 of Ukraine’s allies have pledged to deploy troops as a “reassurance force” for Ukraine once fighting ends.

Macron spoke after a meeting in Paris of the so-called coalition of the willing, a group of 35 countries that support Ukraine. He said that 26 of the countries had committed to deploying troops to Ukraine — or to maintaining a presence on land, at sea or in the air — to help guarantee the country’s security the day after any ceasefire or peace is achieved.

Addressing the participants of the international economic conference the Ambrosetti Forum on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was important that security guarantees “start working now, during the war, and not only after it ends.”

He said he could not disclose more details as they are “sensitive and relate to the military sphere.” Russian troops attacked Ukraine overnight with 157 strike and decoy drones, as well as seven missiles of various types, Ukraine’s air force reported Friday. Air defences shot down or jammed 121 of the drones, it said.

One attack damaged multiple residential buildings in Dnipro in central Ukraine, regional administration head Serhii Lysak wrote on social media. The regional administration also said that an unspecified “facility” had been set alight in the strike, but did not give further details.

Lysak shared photos of residential buildings with damaged roofs, glass shards lying on the ground and people carrying wooden boards to cover broken windows. “Private homes were damaged. Windows in apartment buildings were shattered,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region north of Kyiv, Russian drones attacked infrastructure in the Novhorod-Siversk district, leaving at least 15 settlements without electricity, local authorities reported.

Elsewhere, Russian troops destroyed 92 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defence Ministry said Friday. Local social media channels in the city of Ryazan, approximately 200 kilometres southeast of Moscow, reported that the city’s Rosneft oil refinery had been targeted. They shared videos that appeared to show a fire against the night sky. Local Gov Pavel Malkov said that drone debris had fallen on an “industrial enterprise” but did not give further details, instead warning residents not to post images of air defences on social media.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping rolls out the red carpet for his Indian and Russian counterparts, touting a new model of international relations. Photo: Suo Takekuma/Associated Press

President Vladimir Putin said Russia would view any foreign troops in Ukraine as legitimate targets for its forces, setting a Kremlin red line a day after European and U.S. officials met in Paris to discuss security guarantees that could include sending thousands of Western troops to Ukraine.

“We’ll proceed from the assumption that these are legitimate targets for strikes,” Putin said. He also expressed doubts that any high-level meetings between Russia and Ukraine would lead to a resolution of the conflict because the two sides are far apart in their positions.

Key Points and Summary – Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a direct threat this week, warning that any Western troops sent to Ukraine would be considered “legitimate targets.”

-His comments are a direct response to a plan announced Thursday by a UK- and French-led coalition to send a post-war “reassurance” force to guard Ukraine’s borders.

-Ukrainian President Zelenskyy confirmed Friday that an agreement is in place for “thousands” of such troops. Putin’s threat dramatically escalates tensions over security guarantees, framing the plan as an unacceptable continuation of NATO expansion and complicating any potential peace deal.

Putin Threatens to Target NATO Troops In Ukraine

Having already ruled out the prospect of NATO peacekeeping troops being sent to Ukraine post-war, Russian President Vladimir Putin this week threatened to respond militarily if European leaders move forward with the plan.

The Russian president insisted that his troops would consider NATO troops “legitimate targets,” citing his longstanding opposition to the eastward expansion of the military alliance.

Speaking at an economic forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Putin said that Western plans to put troops in Ukraine as part of a “security guarantees” deal pose a threat to Russia, and that his forces would respond accordingly.

“If some troops appear there, especially now during the fighting, we proceed from the premise that they will be legitimate targets,” Putin said.

The Russian president noted that sending NATO troops to Ukraine would constitute a return to the “root causes” that caused the conflict to begin with: namely, the eastward expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders.

Putin Makes a Big Threat

His comments could be interpreted as a warning against sending troops before the end of the war, though in recent weeks he has repeatedly insisted that European troops being sent to Ukraine after the war would also be an unacceptable condition of a negotiated peace deal.

While European leaders remain adamant that peacekeeping troops must be allowed into Ukraine as part of a deal, U.S. President Donald Trump responded by floating the possibility of sending Chinese troops to Ukraine, instead.

Why Now?

Putin’s threat came in response to a Thursday pledge by two dozen countries, led by the United Kingdom and France, to contribute to a new “reassurance” force in Ukraine.

Under the proposal, signatory countries would send troops to Ukraine to guard its borders on land, at sea, and in the air – effectively guaranteeing a permanent military presence on Ukraine’s borders.

Such a deal would put NATO troops closer to Russia than before the war.

Speaking during a joint press conference with European Council President Antonio Costa, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy said that while the deal was still in its early stages, it is expected to involve troops on the ground in Ukraine.

“It will definitely not be single digits, but in the thousands,” Zelenskyy said. “And that is a fact, but it is still a little too early to talk about it.”

About the Author:

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York who writes frequently for National Security Journal. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.

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