British troops join Exercise Koalicja as 11 nations rehearse Ukraine peacekeeping force

British troops and RAF jets will join Exercise Koalicja in Poland next month, the Ministry of Defence has announced — the first war-game staged by the Multinational Force Ukraine, the military branch of the Coalition of the Willing, and the most concrete rehearsal yet of a peacekeeping operation for Ukraine. Some 2,800 personnel from eleven nations will take part between November 9 and 22, with the UK and France leading.

The stated aim is to ensure NATO forces are ready to provide Ukraine with security guarantees when the war with Russia ends. Around 300 British troops will participate, with soldiers from the Army's 7 Brigade — the Desert Rats — rehearsing logistical movements of troops, food and fuel. RAF Typhoons and a Voyager refuelling aircraft will fly overhead, simulating how they would reassure commercial aviation once Ukrainian airspace reopens. Participating nations include Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the UK; Turkish forces in Istanbul will rehearse maritime mine clearance to help restore commercial shipping to Ukrainian ports.

The exercise was agreed at a Coalition of the Willing summit in July, and its timing is not incidental. US-mediated negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are scheduled to resume in Abu Dhabi next week, and American negotiators will meet French, German, British, EU and NATO representatives in Brussels beforehand to discuss security guarantees and Europe's post-war architecture. A rehearsed, deployable force gives any ceasefire line something to be enforced with — a way of locking in an arrangement before the negotiating table shifts again.

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting framed it in overtly permanental terms: "This isn't a hypothetical plan, it's a real force, ready to help Ukraine once the fighting stops." Lieutenant General Tom Bateman, the British three-star general who commands the Multinational Force Ukraine, said the exercise would show the force is "real, capable, readily deployable" and would leave Ukrainian forces "in the strongest possible position to deter future aggression."

What the announcements leave open is the question the exercise itself cannot answer: whether the political guarantee behind it survives contact with Washington. Eleven European nations are drilling for a ceasefire that American mediators are negotiating in the Gulf, on a timeline set in Brussels meetings to which Ukraine's neighbours are invited but not hosting. The troops will rehearse moving food and fuel. Whether they will ever be authorised to move anything else is being decided elsewhere.