European Union’s Top General’s Proposal Would Return Ukraine To The Grey Zone

Executive Summary:

• General Robert Brieger, chairman of the European Union’s Military Committee, proposed a UN-mandated peace-support mission to be deployed in Ukraine following a Russia-Ukraine armistice. The European Union or some of its member states would participate alongside countries from the “Global South” acceptable to Russia.
• UN peace-support mandates must, as a rule, be negotiated with Russia and are subject to Russian approval in the UN Security Council. Russia has long used its veto power to either block, emasculate, or liquidate peacekeeping missions in Russia’s “near abroad.”
• Ukraine’s Western partners decided in 2002 to exclude Russia from post-armistice or post-war security arrangements for Ukraine. This remains the basis for current discussions about such arrangements. A UN-mandated, Russian-influenced peace-support mission would reverse Ukraine’s Western trajectory, returning it to the pre-2022 grey zone between Russia and the West.

General Robert Brieger, chairman of the European Union’s Military Committee, in a January 25/26 interview with Die Welt am Sonntag, proposed a United Nations (UN) mandated peacekeeping mission to monitor and enforce an eventual ceasefire in a territorially reduced Ukraine. He neither avers nor denies that a UN peacekeeping mandate would have to be negotiated with Russia and be subject to Russian approval in the UN Security Council. The proposal envisages the “Global South” and other countries acceptable to Russia to participate alongside Western allies in this peace-support force in Ukraine (Die Welt am Sonntag, January 25/26; Ukrainska Pravda, January 26).

In these key elements, Brieger’s proposal diverges from the consensus among European allies who contemplate deploying a post-armistice military presence in Ukraine. They agree in unison with Kyiv that the mission be allied (Euro-Atlantic) in its composition and not subject to a UN mandate, let alone the inevitable Russian vetting of such a mandate. They also seem to agree that the mission would involve both peacekeeping and deterrence of Russian repeat aggression. Beyond this basic consensus, however, European allies are currently mired in unstructured debates about the parameters of a post-armistice military presence in Ukraine.

Sketching out some of the parameters of the peace-support mission, Brieger anticipates that the troops would monitor the ceasefire in the demilitarized zone along the contact line (one that would cut across Ukraine). The mission would necessitate a “robust mandate, including authorization to use [to fire] weapons and [call in] air support in enforcing the ceasefire.” The number of troops required would be “at the high end of a five-digit number,” i.e., approaching 100,000. EU member states could, subject to a political decision, “provide substantial troop contributions for supervising a ceasefire in Ukraine.” It is, however, “not only Europeans … but also [personnel] from the Global South or the Caucasus” [sic]. All this is early in the game, and Breuer cautions that it “sounds very theoretical at this time” (Die Welt am Sonntag, January 25/26).

The intriguing reference to troops “from the Caucasus” alongside those from the “Global South” reveals a quest for troop contributions from countries whose partnership may be attractive to Russia. This, in turn, reflects the anticipation—albeit not openly stated—that a UN mandate would have to be negotiated with Russia lest Russia block it in the UN Security Council.

The European Union should expect the aggressor, Russia, to insist on participating in a UN-mandated peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, as it did in all previous missions of this type in what it deems its “near abroad” (see below), and even more so in what it now deems the “Russian World” (Russkiy Mir, русский мир) in Ukraine. A UN-mandated mission in Ukraine would provide a way to include Russia instead of an EU-mandated mission that would exclude Russia.

Whether Gen. Brieger is airing recommendations that he may have submitted to the European Union’s Military Committee and political authorities or might speak out without clearance to launch a trial balloon is unclear. As an Austrian, his proposal may reflect his country’s ethos of neutrality between the West and Russia. The proposal seems out of line with current discussions among European allies and between them and Ukraine.

Russia has invariably used its veto powers to shape international peacekeeping mandates in its own interest in the UN Security Council and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) regarding armed conflicts that Moscow had itself instigated in its “near abroad.” Russia successfully insisted on participating in such peacekeeping missions—moreover, in the dominant role—despite being an active party to those conflicts. Moscow typically used the twofold threat to escalate the hostilities and to hold up the peacekeeping mandate’s approval, thus compelling the other parties—local and Western—to satisfy most of Moscow’s demands on the mandate’s parameters. 

Once the mandate was finally adopted to its satisfaction, Russia acted as a strict constructionist in interpreting those mandates, micromanaging the missions even as it sabotaged them through actions outside the mandates. Ultimately, Russia vetoed those peacekeeping missions out of existence at some convenient moment.

Such was the history of the UN peacekeeping mission in Abkhazia, Georgia, which Russia did not directly control but shaped its mandate in the UN Security Council, provided its logistics, and ran a parallel Russian “peacekeeping” mission, then liquidated both missions in 2008 (see EDM, June 30, October 14, 2008); the OSCE’s Georgia Border Monitoring Mission and “peacekeeping” operation in South Ossetia, Georgia until Russia vetoed their continuation (see EDM, April 19, 2005, December 19, 2008); and the OSCE’s Observer Mission on the Russian-Ukrainian border and Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine in the 2014–2021/2022 ceasefire monitoring missions, which Russia heavily sabotaged from within until evicting them (see EDM, September 30, 2021, March 17, 2022).

Russia’s veto power enabled the evisceration of those missions. If the European Union were to seek a UN mandate for post-armistice peacekeeping in Ukraine, it would face the same Russian veto power over the mandate, parameters, and subsequent operations of such a mission.

Western governments had long treated Russia as indispensable to relative stability and peacekeeping or ceasefire monitoring in the “frozen conflict” paradigm. Negotiations toward eventual political settlements were also weighted in Russia’s and its local proxies’ favor, as with the Minsk “agreements” on Ukraine (2014–2022). Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, however, compelled a long overdue Zeitenwende in Western thinking. It disqualified the aggressor, Russia, from any role in peacekeeping and political resolution processes.

The Kyiv Security Compact, authored primarily by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) former Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2002, outlined post-war security commitments for Ukraine to be provided by Western countries only, programmatically excluding Russia. NATO’s 2024 summit adopted a watered-down version, the Ukraine Compact, ruling out any Russian participation in peacekeeping or post-war security guarantees. These are clearly defined as matters between Ukraine and its NATO and EU partners exclusively (see EDM, December 16, 2022, and August 6, 7, 2024). This continues to be the case with current discussions among European allies and between them and Ukraine about post-armistice peacekeeping and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Ukraine’s fight and its Western partners’ commitments have, since 2022, taken the country (in practice, the government-controlled territory) out of the grey zone between Russia and the West, moving Ukraine into the Western orbit politically and regarding its future security.

This historic change would, however, be reversed by a UN-mandated peace-support mission in Ukraine, subject to Russian approval of its parameters and contributing countries, including Russia. Such a mission would reverse Ukraine’s Western trajectory, consigning a diminished Ukraine back to the pre-2022 grey zone between Russia and the West.