“The reset has to consist of the United States and Ukraine getting back on the same page, President Zelenskyy giving his unequivocal backing to the initiative that President Trump is taking to end the war and to bring a just and lasting peace to Ukraine,” Mandelson said. “And the Europeans too, they need to back the calls for a cease-fire, and – by the way – I think that Ukraine should be the first to commit to a cease-fire and defy the Russians to follow.”
But Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard on Monday distanced himself from Mandelson’s line. “That’s not government policy,” he told Sky News. “We’re still in discussions, diplomatic engagement, with our European, U.S. and Ukrainian friends as to the shape of that deal.”
The row-back comes as the U.K. tries to position itself at the head of a “coalition of the willing” of countries ready to put peace-keeping troops in Ukraine after any cease-fire deal.
However, the U.K. continues to insist American air cover and aerial support is necessary for peace to be sustainable and for Russia to be deterred from further aggression in Ukraine.
‘No agreement’ on one-month truce
Pollard also would not be drawn on French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion Sunday that Britain and France are proposing a partial one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine.
Macron told Le Figaro that he and Starmer are pitching a “truce in the air, on the seas and energy infrastructures” that would last for a month. European troops would only be deployed on the ground at a later stage, he suggested.
“No agreement has been made on what a truce looks like, so I don’t recognize the precise part that you mentioned there,” Pollard, the U.K. armed forces minister told Times Radio Monday morning when pressed on Macron’s comments.
“I won’t be able to talk about what the structure of a peace plan looks like or what any security forces, any security guarantees would look like afterwards, but I can say that the discussion was positive. European nations are clear that we need to do more.”
