British columnist The Times Mark Urban proposed an idea that could change the approach to the settlement of the war in Ukraine. According to him, one of the options is considering reducing the number of the Ukrainian army within the country and transferring the main forces of the Armed Forces to the territory of Europe.
He sees the main problem of future peace negotiations as the different vision of Kyiv and Moscow regarding future security guarantees so that the conflict does not repeat itself.
"Putin will try to insist that Ukraine maintain a small army and limit its ties with NATO armies," the author writes.
In this context, according to him, "all kinds of ideas are circulating" in the West, how to implement this condition.
In particular, it is considered "permission to base a large number of Ukrainian troops in NATO countries so that, strictly speaking, they are not part of the deployed forces of their country." Another idea is to place Western weapons in Ukraine for the emergency deployment of Western forces in the event of a resumption of war.
It should be noted that in his "victory plan" Zelensky proposed to replace American troops in Europe with Ukrainian ones.
At the same time, according to Urban, it is "easy" to fulfill Moscow's condition regarding Kyiv's non-admission to NATO. "When Putin and other Kremlin officials talk about preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, it's easy because it's not seriously on the agenda," the author writes.
