Portugal reaffirms support to Ukraine ad underwrites declaration with security guarantees

The Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro attended on Tuesday the Coalition of the Willing Meeting for Ukraine in Paris, where he underwrote the Paris Declaration, which sets security guarantees for a solid and lasting peace in Ukraine.

At the end of the meeting, the Prime Minister struck a "highly positive" balance and noted "the US’s major involvement with the coalition and Ukraine to find a peace solution that is just and lasting and security guarantees to preserve that peace".

"The intention is to have on the ground a force that can deter future peace disturbances", claimed the Prime Minister following the meeting.

As for the national contribution to this effort, the Prime Minister assured that "Portugal will always rise to its tasks". After recalling that Portugal is already collaborating to boost Ukrainian maritime and aerial defence capabilities, the Prime Minister indicated that "in the future, once we have consolidated peace, a cease-fire and the conditions to have coalition boots on the ground, we will bring this to the table for decision internally".

Luís Montenegro clarified that "it is completely unthinkable for there to be Portuguese boots on Ukrainian soil while there is a war" but added that "it is not unthinkable for our military to be part of a multinational team allocated to a peacekeeping mission in the future". 

This participation in such a context "falls under our international commitments, namely within NATO, as well as the European Union and, at the moment, this Coalition too", he added, reminding that Portugal has been "a solidary partner by participating in peacekeeping forces, as happens in the East fank with missions in Slovakia and Romania".

The Paris Declaration, signed by the members of the Coalition, Ukraine, and the United States sets a system of politically and legally binding guarantees that will be activated once a cease-fire is achieved. 

This system is based on five pillars: a ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism, support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a multinational force for Ukraine, binding commitments to support Ukraine in case of a future armed attack by Russia, and a commitment to deepen long-term defence cooperation with Ukraine.