UK defence chief refuses to reveal troop numbers for Ukraine ceasefire

UK Defence Secretary John Healey has declined to disclose how many British troops could be deployed to Ukraine to help police a possible ceasefire.

Responding to a question from shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge about the UK’s commitments under the declaration, Healey said he was “simply not... going to get into details about the nature of the activities in the deployment, the numbers of troops that are likely to be deployed to Ukraine, or the details of the commitments that other nations have made,” Sky News reports.

He added that providing such information would “only make Putin wiser.”

A “Coalition of the Willing” summit was held in Paris on January 6, bringing together European leaders alongside US special envoy Steve Witkoff and White House adviser Jared Kushner. Ukraine was represented by a delegation led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Following the talks, Zelenskyy, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and French President Emmanuel Macron signed a declaration outlining plans to deploy multinational forces to Ukraine after the end of the conflict.

According to The Times, the UK and France would together send up to 15,000 troops to Ukraine if a peace agreement with Russia is reached, a figure well below earlier expectations.

Under initial plans, the UK was expected to contribute 10,000 troops as part of a wider force of around 64,000 personnel. However, the Ministry of Defence later conceded that such commitments were unrealistic given the current size of the British army.

According to sources cited by the newspaper, London is now likely to deploy fewer than 7,500 troops. France remains the only other country, alongside the UK, to have committed forces, and even the combined total of 15,000 troops from the two countries is described as an optimistic estimate.

By Jeyhun Aghazada