UK ready to send troops, jets, ships if Trump clinches Ukraine ceasefire, defense chief says

By Fox News · Fox News

Britain is preparing to take on the "heavy lifting" in Europe if President Donald Trump secures a Ukrainian ceasefire, U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said, outlining a deployment-ready coalition that London has been quietly organizing for months. The defense chief insisted that Trump is leading the negotiations for peace, even as leaders from Germany , Britain and France huddled with Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week to try to craft an alternative to a U.S.-brokered proposal the Ukrainian president viewed as too deferential to Russia. "We are ready to step in behind the president in his push for peace," he said during a briefing with reporters after meeting with War Secretary Pete Hegseth on AUKUS, the Australia-UK-US nuclear submarine-building deal. "We are ready to step in as he forces the pace of the negotiations in the way that only President Trump can. Because if he can get a ceasefire agreement, we are ready to do the heavy lifting in Europe." Trump has said Ukraine "has to be realistic" about a peace plan that would include ceding territory to Russia — a prospect Zelenskyy has insisted is unacceptable. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday that he, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron had proposed to Trump that they finalize the peace proposal with U.S. officials over the weekend. EUROPEAN TALKS RESHAPE UKRAINE’S PEACE PLAN AS ZELENSKYY REFUSES TERRITORIAL CONCESSIONS Healey said the UK is prepared to send troops and equipment to enforce the peace deal once it is signed. "For the last six months we've got 200 military planners, over 30 nations working together. We've laid reconnaissance visits to Ukraine," he said. "We have the troops ready, we have the planes available. We have the ships on standby to be able to deploy." Healey offered one of the clearest signals yet that Britain expects to play a central role in enforcing any post-war security arrangement — even as Europe remains divided over how a deal should b…