Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said this week Australia could help secure Ukraine by providing “boots on the ground” to help deter Putin from achieving his goal of conquering the country.
He told The Nightly that the security of both Europe and the Indo-Pacific were connected because of the involvement of China and North Korea in the conflict.
Asked directly, Marles did not expand on what role Australia’s defence forces would play in any ongoing security arrangement should Kyiv and Moscow come to a peace deal.
But Marles supported UK Defence Secretary John Healey’s comments that it was most important now to back Ukraine in its fight.
Asked if he was considering placing British troops on the ground to keep the peace as part of any ongoing ceasefire, Healey said his message was that Vladimir Putin “cannot prevail, he will not prevail, and Ukraine will have our support for as long as it needs”.
He said Ukraine needed to be in the “strongest possible” position if Zelensky decided to start talking as well.
“Our job as allied nations that stand steadfast with Ukraine is to support them in any negotiations, just as we will through any battlefield fighting,” Healey said.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who stood beside Marles at the press conference at Lancaster House in central London, will travel to Strasbourg and Brussels this week to meet with her European Union counterpart Kaja Kallas and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Tuesday. They are expected to discuss China’s ongoing role in the conflict as well as shared security concerns.
French President Emmanuel Macron raised the potential of a 40,000-strong peacekeeping force composed of troops from foreign countries in a meeting with Polish President Donald Tusk. The peacekeeping force proposal is separate from Macron’s previous idea to send military instructors to Ukraine during the ongoing war.
Zelensky has previously said he could work with Macron’s position that allied troops have a presence in some territories of Ukraine, which would guarantee Kyiv’s security, while Ukraine was not a member of NATO.