Zelenskyy Floats Foreign Troops, NATO Path as Ukraine Seeks Stronger German Support

On day 1,021 of Russia's invasion, Volodymyr Zelenskyy stood before reporters with a set of numbers that had become the grim currency of this war. Forty-three thousand Ukrainian soldiers dead. One hundred ninety-eight thousand Russian soldiers dead. Of the 370,000 Ukrainians wounded, he said roughly half had recovered enough to return to fighting. The Russians, he claimed, had suffered 550,000 wounded among the nearly 800,000 troops deployed across Ukrainian territory. These figures carried no independent verification—they came from the Ukrainian president's own accounting—but they framed the scale of what was being asked of both nations.

What Zelenskyy was proposing, though, suggested he was thinking beyond the arithmetic of attrition. On Monday, he began floating the idea that foreign troops from other countries could be stationed inside Ukraine as a security guarantee, at least until the country could formally join NATO. This was not a new thought in European circles. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, had raised the prospect of European military deployments to Ukraine back in February, a suggestion that had stirred controversy across the continent. Zelenskyy was now dusting it off, reframing it as a practical bridge between the present moment and whatever security architecture might follow a ceasefire.

"A troop contingent from one country or another could be present in Ukraine for as long as it isn't part of NATO," he told reporters. "But for that we need to have a clear understanding of when Ukraine becomes an EU member and when a NATO member." The statement was carefully constructed—not a demand, but a question posed to the international community about what came next. He was also hoping to speak with Joe Biden in the coming days about NATO membership, he said, signaling that even as the outgoing American president's influence waned, Zelenskyy wanted to lock in conversations about Ukraine's future alignment.

The timing was not accidental. Donald Trump had recently suggested that Kyiv was prepared to negotiate a settlement with Moscow, and that Putin should make moves toward a truce. Zelenskyy's public positioning—open to talks, but only within a framework that secured Ukraine's long-term safety—was a response to that pressure. He was trying to shape what any negotiation might look like before it began.

On the same day, Zelenskyy met with Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany's opposition Christian Democratic Union party, who was leading in polls ahead of February elections. This was a direct appeal to the man who might soon be Germany's next chancellor. "We are counting on stronger, more decisive actions from Germany, from you personally. We are counting on it very much," Zelenskyy said. He named two specific needs: an invitation to join NATO and long-range missiles. Merz had already called on the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to send Ukraine the Taurus missile system, a weapon capable of striking deep into Russian territory—something Scholz had consistently refused. The message was clear: Zelenskyy was preparing for a German government that might be more willing to arm Ukraine.

Estonia's prime minister, Kristen Michal, was also in Kyiv on Monday, meeting with Zelenskyy and Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. The parade of foreign visitors underscored how much diplomatic activity was accelerating around the question of Ukraine's future.

Meanwhile, the war itself continued without pause. Russian attacks killed a 91-year-old woman in the village of Stara Mykolayivka in the Donetsk region. Four others were wounded in the same strike. In the southern Kherson region, a man was killed, according to the local governor, Oleksandr Prokudin. These were the daily casualties that did not make it into Zelenskyy's casualty counts—the civilians caught in the grinding continuation of a conflict that both sides were now beginning, however tentatively, to imagine ending.