A key hurdle to Ukraine peace deal has been overcome thanks to Britain and France – this is what’s next

The announcement that the UK and France plan to station troops within Ukraine and build military hubs if a peace deal is signed with Russia is not a magic wand. But it is a key moment.

It may help remove one of the biggest obstacles to hammering out a truce to end four years of slaughter Russia has inflicted on the Ukrainian people.

And so it signals a significant step forward. I find myself in rare agreement with Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that a “milestone” has been reached in Europe.

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One of the main sticking points in any deal has always been Ukraine’s need for security guarantees.

Every single Ukrainian commander, presidential adviser, politician, foot soldier and civilian I have spoken to since the launch of the full-scale invasion in 2022 has repeated the same message to me: they fear Russia will renege on a deal.

The consensus for four years has been that history proves it would be suicidal for Ukraine to enter any kind of peace agreement without a solid mechanism in place where, should Moscow break the terms, Kyiv’s powerful allies will have its back militarily.

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It is why Ukraine, since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, has desperately sought Nato membership.

The need is for Article 5, Nato’s mutual defence clause, which requires its members to come to one another’s aid in the event of an attack.

Ukraine’s pursuit of Nato membership has only further enraged Russia, and more recently, Trump. The US president, who appears to be on his own mission to upset Nato allies with threats to take over Greenland, has explicitly told Kyiv to give up on its Nato bid and go ahead and sign a deal with Moscow anyway.

Ukraine has been promised by Trump and other allies that it will get the security guarantees it wants, but there have yet to be concrete details or commitments made public.

Instead, Ukraine has been asked to make concessions in several leaked drafts of potential deals, including a cap on the size of the Ukrainian army, a commitment in the constitution not to join Nato and the surrender of occupied territory to Russia.

But now there has been progress.

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Prime minister Keir Starmer and his French counterpart confirmed British and French troops will be deployed inside Ukraine within “military hubs” once a peace deal has been reached.

No 10 said in a follow-up statement that the announcement made in Paris was the legal framework that would allow this to happen.

Volodymyr Zelensky himself said on social media that they have “worked out in detail” the “force deployment, numbers, specific types of weapons, and the components of the armed forces required”.

The plan will be backed by a US guarantee, which has not yet been outlined, but could possibly come in the form of air defence.

Kushner and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff were both present at the press conference. Witkoff said the guarantees were “as strong as anyone has ever seen” and vowed that Trump “does not back down from his commitments”.

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Again, this is not the magic wand to end the meat grinder of a war which has killed and injured nearly 2 million people on both sides.

But even Zelensky, who recently said there is a long way to go until peace, has called it a “huge step forward” that just a year ago Kyiv would not have been able to imagine.

This comes at a critical time. The US – or more specifically Trump – has effectively signalled that Washington has done enough. Europe is on its own in Ukraine, and now the continent must shoulder the lion’s share of its collective defence.

There have also been grave concerns that Nato security guarantees mean very little given Trump’s repeated insistence he wants to unilaterally annex Greenland, a territory of Nato-member state Denmark.

With the UK and France stepping up like this, it signals a potential new world order in which the US will not be directly involved in Europe’s defence.

There is a long way to go to achieve peace for Ukraine – the other major stumbling block is Russian-occupied territory – but yesterday was a significant step.