French President Emmanuel Macron first mentioned the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine earlier this year.
France is not ruling out the deployment of troops to Ukraine, according to the country’s European Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad, who emphasized that President Emmanuel Macron stands by his previous statements on the matter. The EU “has a duty to further support Ukraine” in its conflict with Russia, Haddad insisted.
Macron first proposed sending NATO troops to Ukraine in February, but this idea faced significant opposition from other members of the US-led military bloc.
In an interview with Germany’s Berliner Zeitung published on Tuesday, Haddad stated that “President Macron has said that we should not rule out anything, and this stands as ever.” The West should “contemplate training missions in particular,” the minister added.
When asked if he feared a potential escalation of the conflict, should this scenario occur, Haddad accused Russia of shutting down all attempts at a diplomatic settlement. “We should stop drawing red lines for ourselves and seek to embrace what we call strategic ambiguity,” he insisted.
The minister also advocated for allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range missiles to target locations deep inside Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service reported in July that France had previously considered sending about 2,000 troops to Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters in June, Macron revealed that Paris was working to establish a coalition to facilitate the deployment of military instructors to aid Ukraine. At the same time, he claimed that “we are not at war with Russia” and that France did not “want an escalation.”
In May, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy criticized Macron’s remarks on a potential troop deployment, warning that such “strategic ambiguity [could] create the conditions for a catastrophic outburst.”
Throughout June, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles and Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini also expressed opposition to the French president’s idea.
Around the same time, Politico cited anonymous officials as saying that US President Joe Biden had blocked President Macron’s proposal to send Western instructors to Ukraine due to concerns over escalating the conflict.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also repeatedly expressed opposition to sending NATO troops to support Ukraine.
Back in May, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Macron’s rhetoric as “very dangerous,” while President Vladimir Putin cautioned that the deployment of Western forces to Ukraine could lead to a “serious conflict in Europe and a global conflict.”