France and Britain are proposing a partial one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine that would not cover ground fighting, French President Emmanuel Macron told the daily newspaper Le Figaro on March 3.
However, Macron said the truce would cover air, sea and energy infrastructure attacks.
“In the event of a ceasefire, it would be very difficult to verify (fighting) along the front was being respected,” Macron told Le Figaro, adding that the front line was equivalent to the distance between Paris and Budapest.
Macron spoke to Le Figaro as he flew to London for a meeting with European leaders, convened by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to advance efforts at drawing up a Ukraine peace plan.
The summit in London came two days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s White House meeting with US President Donald Trump ended in acrimony.
World leaders have offered a strong show of support to the Ukrainian leader and promised to do more to help his nation.
Under the Franco-British proposal, European ground troops would only be deployed to Ukraine in a second phase, Macron said.
“There will be no European troops on Ukrainian soil in the coming weeks,” Macron argued.
“The question is how we use this time to try to obtain a truce, with negotiations that will take several weeks and then, once peace is signed, a (troop) deployment.”
“We want peace. We don’t want it at any price, without guarantees,” he added.
Zelensky, asked if he was aware of the plan, told reporters in London: “I’m aware of everything.”
Macron has said his country and other European nations must spend more on defence.
He said that this might mean in the region of 3 per cent to 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product. The European Commission also needed to be more innovative in financing defence spending, he said.
