The French president warns Russia again: if the front lines in Ukraine are breached, the deployment of Western ground troops cannot be ruled out. From the pages of The Economist, Emmanuel Macron revisits a concept expressed in February that had sparked much debate.
“If the Russians were to breach the front lines, if there were a Ukrainian request—which is not the case today—we should legitimately ask ourselves the question,” he stated. To exclude it a priori does not mean drawing conclusions from the last two years,” he added, alluding to NATO countries’ initial refusal to send tanks and planes and subsequent reconsideration.
“I do not exclude anything,” emphasized the French president, “because we are facing someone who does not exclude anything. Undoubtedly, we have been too hesitant in defining the limits of our actions towards someone who no longer respects them and who is the aggressor.”
“I have a clear strategic objective: Russia cannot win in Ukraine. If Russia were to win in Ukraine, there would be no security in Europe,” Macron emphasized, adding, “We must not exclude anything because our objective is that Russia can never win in Ukraine.”
“The aggressiveness of the Russian reaction to my words has demonstrated that it had the desired effect, namely, ‘do not think that we will stop here if you do not,'” he continued.
Furthermore, “France is a country that has carried out military interventions, even recently. We have deployed several thousand soldiers in the Sahel to fight terrorism that could pose a threat to us. We did it at the request of sovereign states,” he said, referring to the Barkhane operation of the French armed forces in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Niger against Islamic terrorist groups.
