Putin says foreign troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets

By Max Hunder and Susan Heavey

KYIV/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday thousands of foreign troops could be deployed to his country under post-war security guarantees, but Russian leader Vladimir Putin said Moscow would regard them as legitimate targets to attack.

Their comments underlined the gulf between Kyiv and Moscow as Western pessimism mounts over prospects for ending Russia's war in Ukraine quickly, with U.S. President Donald Trump expressing growing frustration with Moscow by saying Russia appeared "lost" to "deepest, darkest China."

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that 26 countries had pledged to provide post-war security guarantees to Ukraine, including an international force on land and sea and in the air.

Macron initially said those countries would deploy to Ukraine, but later said some of them would provide guarantees while remaining outside Ukraine, for example by helping to train and equip Kyiv's forces.

"It is important that we are discussing all this (security guarantees) ... it will definitely be in the thousands (of troops), not just a few," Zelenskiy said after meeting Antonio Costa, a senior European Union official, in western Ukraine.

Russia has long said one of its reasons for going to war in Ukraine was to prevent NATO from admitting Kyiv as a member and placing its forces in Ukraine.

"Therefore, if some troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction," Putin told an economic forum in Russia's far eastern city of Vladivostok.

"And if decisions are reached that lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply do not see any sense in their presence on the territory of Ukraine, full stop," the Russian president added.

TRUMP'S DISAPPOINTMENT WITH PUTIN

Trump's efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine have included holding talks with Putin, but he has been frustrated at his inability to resolve the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War Two.

He said this week he was "very disappointed" in Putin, and made clear on Friday that he was also upset by moves by Russia and India to improve ties with China as Beijing pushes a new world order. Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi both met Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

"Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!" Trump wrote in a social media post accompanying a photo of the three leaders together at Xi's summit in China.

Trump said on Thursday he would speak to Putin again in the near future. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Friday that he had no doubt that a meeting could be organised very quickly.

As Western pessimism mounts over peace prospects for Ukraine, the United States and Europe are discussing imposing more sanctions on Russia over the war.

"We are ready to do more, we are working with the U.S. and other like-minded partners to increase our pressure, through further sanctions, direct and secondary sanctions. More economic measures to push Russia to stop this war," Costa said after meeting Zelenskiy.

Costa, who is President of the European Council, said without giving details that "the work is starting in Brussels on the new sanctions package and a European team is travelling to Washington D.C. to work with our American friends."

In Vladivostok on Friday, Putin denied that Russia's economy was stagnating, despite a report from the central bank that suggests it is technically in recession.

(Additonal reporting by Yuliia Dysa, Anastasiia Malenko, Bart Meijer Olesya Astakhova, Maxim Rodionov, Darya Korsunskaya and Oksana Kobzeva, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by William Maclean)