(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Ukraine has asked its Western backers to provide 10 years of funding to maintain an 800,000-strong Ukrainian military as part of a potential peace deal to end the war, AFP reported on Wednesday.
According to the Kyiv Post, the request was raised during the first day of trilateral talks between the US, Russia, and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, which continued for a second day on Wednesday.
The request is notable since during previous negotiations, Russia had set limits on the size of the Ukrainian military. During negotiations in Istanbul in the early days of the war in 2022, Russia reportedly demanded Ukraine cap its military at 85,000 troops while Ukraine offered limiting it at 250,000.
While details still needed to be worked out at the time, a potential peace deal that was on the table in March 2022 would have involved Russia withdrawing from all the territory it captured. But the talks were discouraged by the US and NATO, and later that year, Moscow declared its annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts.
But Russia has continued to request limits on the size of Ukraine’s post-war military, though it’s unclear if that’s a priority for Moscow during the current negotiations. European leaders have backed Ukraine’s call for an 800,000-strong army, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously said Kyiv isn’t capable of funding it.
“No, Ukraine is not capable of financing such an army (numbering 800,000 troops),” Zelensky said in December. “We don’t have enough financial resources. That is why I’m conducting this dialogue with world leaders. I consider partial funding of our army through our partners as a security guarantee for us. Because the Armed Forces of Ukraine are, first and foremost, our number one security guarantee.”
Zelensky said on Tuesday that the US had offered Ukraine security guarantees “similar” to NATO membership if it ceded what territory it still controlled in the Donbas, but he rejected the idea of making territorial concessions. The two days of talks in Abu Dhabi ended on Wednesday with an agreement on a prisoner exchange but no sign of a breakthrough.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
