The UK is a leading member of the Coalition of the Willing, a group of around 30 countries set to offer Ukraine protection and recovery assistance at the end of the war.
While no ceasefire agreement is imminent, US President Donald Trump is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin for bilateral talks about ending the war in Alaska next week.
US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin shake hands before attending a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki in 2018. (Photo: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP)
Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute and former top Ministry of Defence (MoD) official, said that the UK is “so stretched that it would be really hard to do something new in Ukraine without pulling it away from, for example, a Nato commitment”.
“We do have typhoons [fighter jets] and do a lot of Nato air policing. We might be pressured to say, instead of doing NATO air policing next year, we will put a rotation as part of Coalition of the Willing in Ukraine,” Savill said.
“If it’s a deterrence force, the reassurance force, you need a pretty decent, pretty chunky force. You’d be talking about a battle group or even a brigade [a formation usually made up between 3,000 and 8,000 troops]. I don’t think we can do that without also affecting our Nato commitments.
At the end of 2023, over 7,000 British troops were deployed on more than 40 operations abroad.
Former chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nicholas Houghton told the House of Commons defence select committee last year that the “hollowing out” of the Armed Forces since 2010 had led to shortfalls in the UK’s warfighting readiness.
UK may need to increase defence spending
While few nations have publicly committed to sending ground troops into Ukraine post war, other allies are expected to offer capabilities including air defence systems, as part of plans for the group “help secure Ukraine’s skies and seas”.
Savill warned that European countries may be forced to increase defence to match the Coalition demands, and would come under greater pressure if the US refuses to provide security guarantees.
A blaze in the aftermath of a Russian drone strike on a warehouse storing food products on 9 August 2025 in Sloviansk, Ukraine. (Photo: Pierre Crom/Getty Images)However, Savill said allies could collectively make a strong force if nations buy in.
Ahead of next week’s Putin-Trump summit, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky has reiterated that Ukraine will not give up territory in exchange for peace.
Marnie Howlett, lecturer in Russian and East European Politics at the University of Oxford, previously told The i Paper that Putin has shown “no real indication that he wants to end the war nor give back the land Russia currently occupies,”
Rescuers work in a destroyed apartment building after a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 31 July 2025. (Photo: AP/Efrem Lukatsky)
Neil Melvin, director of international security at the defence think-tank the RUSI, said that the most likely starting point for ceasefire talks was to end the war along the current battlelines, which have remained broadly consistent for many months.
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Read More“One is the mouth of the Dnipro river, which is very important for Ukraine’s ability to export its grain to reach the Black Sea, so that would be something of value. But these are quite small territories. Another strategic issue is what would happen to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Reports suggest some compromise may see it come under US control.”
The UK has said that it remains “committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force” but that the current line of contact “should be the starting point of negotiations.”
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