French President Emmanuel Macron said that he does not rule out sending ground troops to Ukraine and that to rule it out a priori is to fail to learn the lessons of the last two years. He said this in an interview with The Economist, UNN reports.
Details
When asked by The Economist if he stood by what he said about the possible sending of ground troops to Ukraine, Macron replied: "Absolutely".
"As I said, I do not rule anything out, because we are facing someone who does not rule anything out. Undoubtedly, we were too hesitant to define the limits of our actions to someone who no longer has them and who is the aggressor! Our ability is to inspire trust, to continue to help, to give Ukraine the means to resist. But trust in us also depends on the ability to deter, without giving full clarity about what we will or will not do. Otherwise, we weaken ourselves, and this is the framework within which we have acted so far," Macron said.
According to the French president, "in fact, many countries said that in the following weeks they understood our approach, that they agreed with our position and that this position was good.
"I have a clear strategic goal: Russia cannot win in Ukraine. If Russia wins in Ukraine, there will be no security in Europe. Who can pretend that Russia will stop there? What kind of security will there be for other neighboring countries - Moldova, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and others? And what trust would we have in Europeans who would spend billions, say that the continent's survival is at stake, and not give themselves the means to stop Russia? So yes, we should not rule anything out, because our goal is to ensure that Russia can never win in Ukraine," Macron said.
When asked whether he thought other leaders would have to share your position on this if Russia is finally to be deterred, the French president said: "You should never engage in political fantasy. But I am convinced of one thing, and that is that this is a basic condition for European security and military credibility.
So if Russia decides to move forward, we will all have to ask ourselves this question anyway. That's why I wanted to give this strategic wake-up call to my colleagues and also to our countries. France is a country that has carried out military interventions, including recently. We have deployed several thousand troops in the Sahel to fight terrorism that could pose a threat to us. We did so at the request of sovereign states. If the Russians had broken through the front line, if there had been a Ukrainian request-which there is not today-we would have legitimately asked ourselves this question. Therefore, I believe that to exclude this a priori is not to learn the lessons of the last two years
According to him, at the NATO summit in the summer of 2022, "we all excluded the supply of tanks, deep-damage missiles, aircraft." "Now we are all doing this, so it would be wrong to exclude the rest," he said.
"But, first of all, it would be wrong to exclude it from the point of view of trust and deterrence of the Russians. By the way, I note that the aggressiveness of the Russian reaction to what I said showed that it had the desired effect, namely: don't think that we will stop here if you don't stop," Macron said.
Recall
On February 27 , French President Emmanuel Macron saidthat there are no concrete plans to send Western forces to Ukraine, but that it cannot be ruled out.