Former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo has urged Australia not to send troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping mission, citing the nation’s small force and “priorities” back home.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined a “Coalition of the Willing” last weekend to discuss efforts to provide support for Ukraine, with leaders from the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada and New Zealand agreeing to work on delivering concrete actions to support the country.
The Prime Minister flagged he may send a “small contribution” to the peacekeeping mission, which has attracted scathing criticism from the Coalition.
Speaking to Sky News on Friday, Mr Pezzullo acknowledged an armistice and a “heavy war-fighting force” was needed to deter Russia from carrying out further territorial incursions.
However, the former Home Affairs secretary warned the large number of troops required meant Australia was not in an ideal position to contribute to the plan.
“That’s going to have to be a very large force, and a very large force principally provided by the Europeans, perhaps 30-100,000 troops to provide that thick barrier that would deter a further Russian incursion,” Mr Pezzullo said.
“If we had a larger defence force, two or three times the size of our current defence force, yes, we should probably consider sending troops.
“Our defence force is too small and we’ve got priorities here back home.”
Mr Pezzullo’s comments came after US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin came to a partial ceasefire agreement earlier this week, with the White House confirming the Russian leader agreed to an “immediate ceasefire on all energy and infrastructure.”
A day later the US President spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart over the phone, during which Volodymyr Zelensky also coming to an agreement on a partial ceasefire against energy.
Former foreign minister Alexander Downer said it was “encouraging” to see progress being made but expressed doubts about the pacing of a potential peace agreement.
Mr Downer told Sky News host Chris Kenny the situation was at risk of becoming a “deadlock” like South and North Korea following the war in the early 1950s.
He noted that despite a ceasefire being declared along the current line of demarcation, “not since the 1950s has any successful negotiation led to a peace treaty between North and South Korea”.
“And South Korea has not been able to reunify the country nor North Korea to unify the country, so it’s a deadlock but it’s a deadlock which is not killing anybody,” he said.
“I think this is the analogy to think of here in terms of Ukraine. You’ll end up with a deadlock. Negotiations might start over a peace treaty, some peace agreement, they could take a very long time.”
Regardless, Mr Downer said it was encouraging to “see gradual progress being made”.
“I mean, the ceasefire in terms of attacking energy and infrastructure is a start. Then there’s obviously further discussions that are taking place in the Middle East between the two sides or three sides,” he said.
On Thursday, Volodymyr Zelensky told EU leaders “nothing has changed” for war-torn Ukraine after Russian forces hit its energy infrastructure again, just days after agreeing to immediate cessation of strikes on all energy and infrastructure.
The Ukrainian President informed world leaders in Brussels that Russia had launched an attack on the power grid the night prior to the summit.
“Yesterday evening, another Russian strike hit our energy infrastructure,” Mr Zelensky said.
“We in Ukraine face this every day and night, you know it, and despite Putin’s words about allegedly being ready to stop the attacks – nothing has changed.”
However the Russian drone strikes on energy infrastructure were initiated before Vladimir Putin had the chance to instruct Kremlin forces to stand down after his phone call with Trump, according to US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
“President Putin issued an order within 10 minutes of his call with the president directing Russian forces not to be attacking any Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” Mr Witkoff told Bloomberg News.
“Any attacks that happened last night would have happened before that order was given…I tend to believe that President Putin is operating in good faith.”
