European leaders should be ready to send military forces to secure any Russia-Ukraine peace deal brokered by United States President-elect Donald Trump, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said.
While NATO membership for Kyiv would be the best security guarantee, Tsahkna said, troops being deployed to Ukraine to secure an agreement might be the next best thing.
“If we are talking about real security guarantees, it means that there will be a just peace. Then we are talking about NATO membership,” Tsahkna said in an interview with the Financial Times published Tuesday.
“But without the US it is impossible. And then we are talking about any form [of guarantee] in the meaning of boots on the ground,” he said.
During his presidential campaign, Trump threatened to leave the military alliance if European members don’t increase their defense spending.
He also promised to engineer a quick peace deal once he takes office in January, sparking fears that the agreement would be unfair to Kyiv.
Estonia’s foreign minister said he doesn’t believe Trump would actually withdraw from NATO, because leaving Europe to Russia is not in its interest.
But Europeans would have to raise their game when it comes to defense spending, Tsahkna said, and urged other countries to follow Estonia’s example by increasing taxes to fund larger defense spending.
Estonia, one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, spends 3.4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, the second highest in the transatlantic military alliance after Poland.
“We just cannot wait on whatever the US decides,” said Tsahkna.
