Zelenskyy meets European military leaders to plan for a peacekeeping force

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday, April 5, 2025, met the leaders of the British and French armed forces in Kyiv.

According to APNews, the meeting is to discuss the potential deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force to Ukraine.

This comes despite the reluctance of U.S. President Donald Trump to provide security guarantees.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense said that officials addressed the structure, size and composition of any future “reassurance force”.

On its part, the chief of the defense staff, Adm. Antony Radakin, emphasized that the U.K. would look to:

• build on the formidable capabilities of the Ukrainian army and,
• put them in the strongest possible position to deter Russian aggression.

The weekend discussions are planned to set the ground for a further meeting between defense ministers in Brussels and the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday.

Britain has been promoting the idea of a European-led peacekeeping force for Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.

But it has said such a force needed a U.S. “backstop” to make it credible in the face of possible Russian reprisals.

Building a force big enough to act as a credible deterrent, U.K. officials have suggested about possibly 10,000 to 30,000 troops.

It believed the number would be a considerable effort for nations that shrank their militaries after the Cold War but are now rearming.

Trump, who has been pushing for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, temporarily paused military aid to Kyiv.

He had repeatedly said that the country will never join the NATO military alliance.

Death toll from from Friday’s strike rises to 18

Regional Governor Serhii Lysak said on Saturday, the death toll from a Russian missile strike in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has risen to 18, including nine children.

A further 72 people were injured in Friday’s attack, the youngest a 3-month-old.

About half of them remained in the hospital, with 17 in serious condition.

“There can never be forgiveness for this,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defense council. “Eternal memory to the victims.”

Kryvyi Rih is Zelenskyy’s hometown.

Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram:

“The missile struck an area right next to residential buildings, hitting a playground and ordinary streets,”

Local authorities said the strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Friday that it had carried out a high-precision missile strike with a high explosive warhead on a restaurant where a meeting with unit commanders and Western instructors was taking place.

Russian military claimed that the strike killed 85 military personnel and foreign officers and destroyed 20 vehicles. The military’s claims could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian General Staff rejected the claims.

A later drone strike on Kryvyi Rih killed one woman and wounded seven other people.

The Ukrainian air force wrote on social media Saturday that Russian forces launched 92 drones into Ukraine overnight.

It said the air defenses shot down 51 of the drones.

A further 31 decoy drones also failed to reach their targets, it added.

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