OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
4:44 PM – Tuesday, February 27, 2024
After French President Emmanuel Macron declared that “nothing should be excluded,” a number of NATO members, including the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have asserted that they will not be deploying ground forces to Ukraine.
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According to President Macron, there was “no consensus” on sending Western troops to Ukraine.
NATO forces deployed there “could lead to direct combat,” according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. After recent advances by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, Kyiv has issued an urgent request for additional weapons and foreign volunteers.
“We should not exclude that there might be a need for security that then justifies some elements of deployment,” Macron explained at a news conference on Monday night. “But I’ve told you very clearly what France maintains as its position, which is a strategic ambiguity that I stand by.”
Now in its third year, the Ukraine-Russia conflict shows no signs of ending, which is the largest European conflict since World War II. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has maintained that his nation’s warfare efforts will not come to an end until Ukraine claims Crimea.
Meanwhile, other NATO and European member nations responded to Macron’s remarks as well.
According to a White House statement, United States President Joe Biden says that the “path to victory” revolves around providing military assistance so that “Ukrainian troops have the weapons and ammunition they need to defend themselves.”
“President Biden has been clear that the United States will not send troops to fight in Ukraine,” the statement said.
According to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, there had been no alterations to the agreed-upon viewpoint that no NATO member state or European nation would send troops to Ukraine.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman similarly announced that the UK had no intentions to send more troops to Ukraine in excess of the few already there who were sent to train Ukrainian soldiers.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office stated that Italy’s “support does not include the presence of troops from European or NATO states on Ukrainian territory.”
Peskov, referring to the Kremlin, called Macron’s proposal a “very important new element,” adding that it definitely is not in favor of NATO members.
“In that case, we would need to talk not about the probability, but about the inevitability [of direct conflict],” Peskov said.
Prior to this, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that the organization would continue to defend Ukraine, but he denied that the union was considering sending troops there. Several NATO members, including Spain, Poland, and the Czech Republic, have expressed the same stance.
Russia is said to be significantly more powerful militarily than Ukraine, whose forces heavily rely on sophisticated weaponry supplied by Western allies, especially the United States.
Zelenskyy further stated that “everything we do together to defend against Russian aggression adds real security to our nations for decades to come” during Monday’s video conference in Paris.
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