UK-French commitment to overseeing peace deal in Ukraine only gets Zelenskyy so far

The United Kingdom and France signed a declaration of intent in Paris on 6 January 2026 committing to the deployment of British and French troops in Ukraine should a peace deal be agreed to end the conflict there.

The declaration followed a meeting of a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Paris that day, involving around 30 countries, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Also in attendance were Trump Administration peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

However, on 7 January Zelenskyy warned that Ukraine’s European allies had not given him sound guarantees that they would protect Ukraine in the case of renewed Russian aggression. “I am asking this very question to all our partners and I have not received a clear, unambiguous answer yet,” Zelenskyy told reporters, adding that “as long as we don’t have such security guarantees – legally binding, supported by parliaments, supported by the United States Congress – this question cannot be answered. And even if they do, you still have to rely primarily on your own strength.”

The UK-French declaration of intent stated that the two countries would deploy their armed forces, alongside those of a Multinational Force – Ukraine (MNF-U), “on the territory of Ukraine in all domains to support Ukraine’s capabilities to deter third countries from carrying out further attacks on Ukraine’s territory”.

It also stated that France and the UK would “involve the MNF-U in the conduct of deterrence operations in the air, on land and at sea, and the conduct of training, planning, comprehensive recovery and regeneration of forces, integration of command-and-control systems, as well as other jointly defined operational requirements”.

Meanwhile, there seems little interest in genuine peace in Moscow. Russia has recently intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure. As of 8 January, for example, more than a million people in Ukraine’s frontline region of Dnipropetrovsk were without heating and water supplies following a series of Russian drone strikes.