Germany, Britain and other European countries said Tuesday they had no plans to send ground troops to Ukraine after France hinted at the possibility, and the Kremlin warned that any such move would inevitably lead to conflict between Russia, Ukraine and NATO.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that Western allies should not rule out any options in trying to avoid a Russian victory in Ukraine, although he stressed there was no consensus at this stage.
His comments, made at a hastily convened meeting of European leaders in Paris on ways to increase support for Kiev, come against a backdrop of battlefield gains for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces in eastern Ukraine and growing shortages of ammunition and troops on the Ukrainian side.
However, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic have distanced themselves from any suggestion that they could send ground troops to the war in Ukraine, now in its third year.
“There will be no troops, no soldiers sent to Ukrainian soil by European countries or NATO countries,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was equally adamant.
“The deployment of troops on the ground is not an option for Germany,” Pistorius told reporters during a visit to Vienna.
Seeking to clarify Macron’s comments, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné said Tuesday that the president was planning to send troops for specific tasks, such as helping with mine clearance, weapons production and cyber defense.
“This may require a (military) presence on Ukrainian territory, without crossing the threshold of combat,” Séjourné told French lawmakers.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis welcomed Macron’s push for allies to focus more on helping Kiev. “Times like these require political leadership, ambition and courage to think outside the box,” he said in a post on X.
Scholz said European leaders now appear willing, after talks on Monday, to acquire weapons from non-European countries as a way to speed up military aid to Ukraine.
Germany has become Kiev’s second-largest supplier of military aid since Russia launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, but is extremely wary of measures that would bring the NATO alliance into direct conflict with the Russia.
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In Moscow, the Kremlin issued an immediate warning of what was at stake.
“The very fact of discussing the possibility of sending some contingents from NATO countries to Ukraine is a very important new element,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about Macron’s remarks.
Asked by journalists what the risks of a direct conflict between Russia and NATO would be if NATO members sent their soldiers to fight in Ukraine, Peskov said:
“In that case, we should be talking not about the probability, but about the inevitability (of direct conflict).”
Russia and the United States – the great power behind NATO – have the largest arsenals of nuclear weapons in the world. US President Joe Biden has warned that a conflict between Russia and NATO could spark World War III.
The possibility of German troops, in particular, being sent into former Soviet territory is extremely sensitive for Russia, whose fierce resistance to Hitler’s invasion during World War II is an integral part of its national identity. Putin even classified Russia’s actions in Ukraine as a fight against “Nazis,” a position that Kiev and the West consider cynical and absurd.
A White House official told Reuters on Monday that the United States has no plans to send troops to fight in Ukraine, nor are there plans to send NATO troops to fight there.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has stepped up his pressure on European governments to obtain more artillery shells and long-range weapons. However, political wrangling in Washington has blocked much-needed US aid worth $61 billion.
The Czech Republic this month announced plans, backed by Canada, Denmark and others, to finance the rapid purchase of hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition from other countries to send to Ukraine.
Source: Terra
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