Could UN peacekeepers be the key to a Ukraine ceasefire force?

Good morning. Yesterday the White House announced it had reached a ceasefire deal for the Black Sea with Kyiv and Moscow, though it remains unclear whether it will hold and what the consequences of a breach would be.

Below, Laura has more on calls for the potential deployment of UN peacekeepers to secure a lasting ceasefire — when and if that is agreed. And Sweden’s EU minister tells my Brussels colleague that the political decision-making for enlargement needs to be streamlined.

Blue helmets

European countries are discussing deploying UN peacekeepers in Ukraine to secure a possible peace deal, writes Laura Dubois.

Context: The US is trying to broker a full peace deal in Ukraine. European countries, which have been excluded from the talks, are increasingly resigned to enforcing it — and are in intense discussions over various formats and how they could work.

Yesterday, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN official in charge of peacekeeping operations, admitted that the question of deploying UN peacekeepers in Ukraine was “asked more frequently now”.

Given the talk of a “potential ceasefire”, Lacroix said “people naturally think, well, if there could be a ceasefire, then there could be a third-party monitoring mechanism.”

Lacroix said that a peacekeeping mission would, however, depend on a mandate from the UN Security Council. That’s a major issue for many western states given Russia and China are veto-wielding members.

Under such a “hypothetical” mandate, there would be different options, including the troops being commanded by a group of member states, by a regional organisation or formally under the UN’s flag.

“These are scenarios that are not very difficult to imagine,” Lacroix said. But he also added that there were no concrete plans yet, as approval from both conflict parties as well as the members of the UNSC was needed.

“We haven’t been contacted neither by the US nor Russia,” he said.

Italy is among the countries that would prefer a UN peacekeeping mission to monitor a Ukrainian ceasefire rather than troops provided by a European “coalition of the willing”, as championed by UK premier Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Spain has also signalled that it would want a peacekeeping force to have a UN mandate, although it says more details must be settled before it can make any commitment to send troops.

Lacroix said there was still some confusion about the different options to secure a possible ceasefire. He said UN peacekeepers would not provide “a security guarantee”.

“It’s just monitoring the expected ceasefire . . . liaising between the parties and observing and reporting potential violations,” he said.

Chart du jour: Depressurised

After years of benefiting from its monopoly on Russian pipeline gas exports, Gazprom is struggling to recover from record losses after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine destroyed its business model.

Swede dreams

Sweden wants to speed up Ukraine’s progress towards EU membership by removing the right to endless vetoes by member states, writes Andy Bounds. 

Context: Hungary, the EU’s most pro-Russian member state, begrudgingly allowed accession talks with Kyiv to formally begin when Prime Minister Viktor Orbán artfully recused himself from a vote of EU leaders in December 2023. But Budapest has blocked the opening of technical negotiations in several areas necessary for the country to join.

Jessica Rosencrantz, Sweden’s EU minister, has called for a change in rules so only the opening and closing of the entire process requires unanimity.

The individual stages in-between should only need a qualified majority vote (QMV) of member states, she told the Financial Times.

“I think we need to go from unanimity to QMV when it comes to opening and closing clusters, because it’s not reasonable that there is an opportunity for a single country to block an accession process hundreds of times,” Rosencrantz said.

Before last week’s EU leaders’ summit, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia called on Brussels to produce “concrete proposals on how to decisively advance Ukraine’s accession process”.

“What is needed is political pressure on Hungary,” Rosencrantz added. “This is a merit-based process, and Ukraine has shown that they have made tremendous progress despite being in the midst of a war.”

Stockholm also wants faster progress with Albania, North Macedonia and other candidates for EU membership. 

“It’s important to see enlargement as a geostrategic investment in our own security,” Rosencrantz said.

She accepted that it would be tough to convince everyone, but the “enlargement fatigue” of the past was gone: “There is a new momentum.”

What to watch today

1. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets France’s Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

2. Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte visits Poland, holds press conference with Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

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