Only Ukraine can decide on foreign troops presence, Sikorski says

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has said that it is Ukraine's decision whether to allow foreign peacekeeping troops to operate in the country.

Photo PAP/Wiktor Dąbkowski
Photo PAP/Wiktor Dąbkowski

"It is for Ukraine to decide, not Russia," Sikorski said on Wednesday after a meeting of European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) in Brussels. 

His words came as a comment to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov's statement on Tuesday that Moscow finds the idea of any foreign troops stationed in Ukraine "unacceptable." 

During the AFET meeting, Sikorski said that Ukraine's ability to decide which troops from abroad, if any, are on its soil is one of the core reasons for Kyiv's resistance to Russia's full-scale war. 

The idea of foreign military presence in Ukraine hails from Kyiv and means that the troops would be stationed on Ukrainian soil under peace mission conditions. (PAP)
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