SIPRI director assesses possibility of deployment of European troops in Ukraine

It is unlikely that Western countries will send their troops to Ukraine before any agreement is concluded, Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm Institute for Peace Research (SIPRI), said in an interview with Izvestia.

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"Ukraine, regardless of what the agreement is, will probably want security guarantees. There are two possible forms it could take. One is for Ukraine to become a member of NATO and the other is for a Western European force to be based there to monitor the ceasefire. So I think it is quite possible that the European forces will appear after an agreement is reached in Ukraine," he said.

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow had a negative attitude to the idea of deploying European peacekeepers in Ukraine, and this is a step towards escalation.

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