Coalition of the Willing announces plans to send troops to Ukraine

LONDON, August 24. /TASS/. The Coalition of the Willing that provides military assistance to Kiev has confirmed plans to send a multinational military force to Ukraine once the conflict there is over, the coalition’s co-chairs said in a statement, released after its members met in the Ukrainian capital. "The Coalition would continue to prepare the Multinational-Force Ukraine to deploy once a credible cessation of hostilities was in place," reads a communique, published by the office of UK Prime Minister Prime Minister Andy Burnham. The participants expect to achieve this as part of "a wider set of robust politically and legally binding security guarantees to ensure Ukraine’s future security and prosperity once a ceasefire enters into force." The exact presumed number of troops was again not disclosed. At the same time, the coalition’s co-chairs urged Russia to agree to a full and immediate ceasefire without preconditions starting from the existing line of contact. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on June 19 that the West’s plan is to ‘freeze’ the conflict without addressing its root causes, and then rapidly deploy military contingents from the Anglo-French ‘Coalition of the Willing’ onto Ukrainian soil in order to preserve Vladimir Zelensky’s regime.