Macron reaffirms possibility of sending troops to Ukraine
www.france24.com
French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed he did not rule out sending troops to Ukraine, saying the issue would "legitimately" arise if Russia broke through Ukrainian front lines and Kyiv made such…

“I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out,” said French President Emmanuel Macron when asked if he stood by comments earlier this year not excluding the sending of Western troops that sent shockwaves around Europe.

Macron said “if Russia decided to go further, we will in any case all have to ask ourselves this question” of sending troops, describing his refusal to rule out such a move as a “strategic wake-up call for my counterparts”.

He described Russia as “a power of regional destabilisation” and “a threat to Europeans’ security”.

  •  acargitz   ( @theacharnian@lemmy.ca ) English
    13•7 months ago

    Macron was the leader that was being mocked for trying to keep talking to Putin and trying to find a way to talk through the crisis.

    This reversal in posture I think is extremely telling of how far gone the Russian leadership is… When even your best interlocutor turns away, even more when they turn hardliner against you, that means they have seen something that has deeply deeply shaken them.

  •  XenGi   ( @XenGi@lemmy.chaos.berlin ) English
    3•7 months ago

    He can’t do that. If French soldiers march into the war officially, Putin would fight against a NATO state. Making it mandatory for every other NATO state to also jump in. Viola we have WW3.

    •  wandermind   ( @wandermind@sopuli.xyz ) English
      14•7 months ago

      That’s literally not how it works, anything else is Russian fearmongering.

      Also a bunch of countries fucking up a single country who can’t even conquer their neighbor does not a world war make. If it did, the Gulf War would be called WW3 already.

    •  Thorny_Insight   ( @Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ) English
      11•7 months ago

      If French were to send soldiers to Ukraine those would be French soldiers, not NATO soldiers. Attack against them is not an attack against a NATO country. Countries like Turkey and USA have been involved in their own conflicts aswell where they have had their troops attacked and this haven’t triggered article 5 either. That’s not how it works.

    •  acargitz   ( @theacharnian@lemmy.ca ) English
      4•7 months ago

      It’s a very very risky escalation not because of NATO, but because France is a nuclear power in its own right. And if nukes start flying around, NATO or no NATO, WW3 has already started.