By Sabine Siebold
BERLIN (Reuters) -European NATO leaders must not be naive when discussing a Ukraine peace force but face up to the reality that they would need to deploy tens of thousands of troops to the country for the long term, the head of Germany's soldiers' union said.
U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to broker peace between Moscow and Kyiv but has ruled out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer have both spoken in favour of troop deployments in a post-war settlement as part of a coalition of the willing, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also signalling openness to German participation.
Colonel Andre Wuestner, head of the German Armed Forces Association, on Thursday called on European leaders not to play down the military task but be honest about the challenges, even though any quick ceasefire seemed unlikely.
"It won't be enough to have a handful of generals and smaller military units man a command post in Ukraine," Wuestner, whose organisation represents more than 200,000 active and retired soldiers, told Reuters.
"From the very beginning, it must be made clear to Putin — and backed by international forces — that we are totally serious about security guarantees", he said.
"Serious about supporting Ukraine, serious about securing a ceasefire, and serious about our response should Putin attempt another attack on Ukraine."
A "bluff-and-pray" approach would be downright negligent and increase the risk of an escalation, the colonel warned.
He estimated that each of the big countries in the coalition of the willing, such as Britain, France and Germany, would need to deploy at least 10,000 troops to Ukraine for the long run, posing a huge challenge to their already stretched and under-equipped forces.
"The Europeans remain military dwarfs and are already struggling to meet the new NATO commitments they made at the last summit," Wuestner said. "Europe is still a long way from being able to defend itself independently."
Therefore, there was an urgent need to finally speed up armament and strengthening the European pillar of NATO.
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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