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Lithuania Ready to Send Peacekeeping Troops to Ukraine, President Nausėda Says
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![Photo of Liubava Petriv]( "Photo of Liubava Petriv")
Lithuania is prepared to contribute peacekeeping forces to a potential mission in Ukraine, country’s President Gitanas Nausėda announced on August 20.
“It is too early to speak about this in detail, because the coalition of those willing to do it has only defined its mandate and will be activated only if peace is ensured. In other words, it will become a guarantor of peace,” Nausėda stated.
The president added that Lithuania is ready to provide peacekeeping troops within the limits of the Seimas mandate.
“It may happen that, for example, we will not need to send troops because it will simply be more important to generate other opportunities, and perhaps we will be asked to do other things. In any case, Lithuania’s participation in peacekeeping operations is unlikely to differ significantly in numbers from what we did in Afghanistan,” Nausėda noted.
US President Donald Trump has ruled out deploying American ground forces to Ukraine.
Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokesperson, said that “a US presence in the air…is an option and a possibility. I won’t certainly rule out anything as far as military options that the president has at his disposal. I’ll let him do that.”
During a Fox & Friends interview on August 19, Trump suggested that while European allies might be willing to deploy personnel on the ground, “We’re willing to help them with things, especially—probably, if you talk about by air, because there’s—nobody has the kind of stuff we have, really, they don’t have.”
Previously, it was reported that Britain is preparing to send its troops to Ukraine to help defend the country’s skies and maritime ports, while making clear they will not be deployed near the front line with Russia.
