UK downplays French ‘one-month truce’ proposal for Ukraine - but what is being discussed?

03 Mar 2025, 10:38 by Lauren Boland, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/lauren-boland/ · TheJournal.ie

AS EFFORTS RAMP up to try to bring an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine, France has proposed a one-month truce “in the air, at sea and on energy infrastructure” – though not for troops on the ground.

The idea comes following an intense round of diplomacy over the weekend but the UK has downplayed the French proposal.

Leaders of several key European countries, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in London over the weekend.

It came in the immediate aftermath of a tumultuous press conference between Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump in the White House which cemented European fears that the US’s approach to ending the war would not be in European interests.

To reaffirm its commitment to Ukraine, the UK signed a €1.9 billion deal to supply more than 5,000 air defence missiles to the front line.

Speaking yesterday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested that European leaders who take the lead in formulating a peace plan that they would then bring to the US.

He told the BBC that “we’ve now agreed that the United Kingdom, along with France and possibly one or two others, will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting, and then we’ll discuss that plan with the United States”.

Following those comments, France is now proposing a plan that would involve a one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine in air space and at sea and that would cover attacks on energy infrastructure, which both sides have used repeatedly.

French President Emmanuel Macron indicated that the UK was also backing the ceasefire plan but the UK’s armed forces minister Luke Pollard has tried today to distance the British government from the proposal, saying that a temporary pause in fighting could give Russia time to ‘regroup’.

“No agreement has been made on what a truce looks like,” said Pollard this morning, speaking on Times Radio.

He signalled that military deployments to Ukraine from European countries could be possible even without a US backstop sought by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and allies but that the UK doesn’t want to give Russia the opportunity to “rearm” and “regroup”.

“Military deployments are possible,” Pollard said.

“But the point is, we want a durable and lasting peace, and this is where it’s really important to understand the distinction between a short pause, which might be able to be achieved, but that doesn’t sustain a durable peace, because there’s a genuine worry by President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians that a short pause will simply allow the Russian forces to reconstitute, to rearm, to regroup and then to attack again,” he said.

His message appeared at odds with that of Eleonore Caroit, a deputy in the French National Assembly for the Renaissance party and vice president of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that plans for a ceasefire in Ukraine sent “a very strong message” and showed that “if we want, we can do something”.

The proposed one-month ceasefire would not, at least initially, cover on-the-ground fighting, French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday.

In an interview with France’s Le Figaro newspaper, Macron said that it would be very difficult to check that an on-the-ground truce was being respected because of the vastness of the front line.

He said that European peacekeepers would be deployed to Ukraine at a later date — not “in the coming weeks”.