Europe must prepare to send troops to defend Ukraine, Macron says

London: Europe must consider sending troops to help defend Ukraine if Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces break through their defence lines in an anticipated offensive in the next three months, Emmanuel Macron has said.

The French president, expanding on remarks he made in February about possible military intervention, said it was vital that nothing was ruled out because if Russia won in Ukraine, there would be “no security in Europe”.

Emmanuel Macron has been a stalwart ally of President Volodymyr Zelensky since his attempts at trying to dissuade Vladimir Putin from invading in 2022 failed.Credit: Bloomberg

Macron made the comments in an interview with The Economist after delivering a speech last week when he declared that Europe was “mortal” and could “die” partly due to the threat posed by Russian aggression after its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“I’m not ruling anything out because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out,” Macron said when asked if he stood by his previous comments not excluding the sending of Western troops. His views at the time drew a sharp put-down from Germany and caused uproar in several other EU states.

Russia has pushed Ukraine onto the back foot on the battlefield as Kyiv grapples with shortages of troops and ammunition after a long delay in military aid. Ukrainian forces are now racing to build more defensive fortifications at places along the around 1000-kilometre front line.

Putin’s forces launched their third attack in a week on the southern port city of Odesa on Thursday, firing ballistic missiles and injuring 14 people, local officials and emergency services said. The attack hit a sorting depot belonging to Ukraine’s biggest private delivery company, Nova Poshta. No staff were injured, the company said, but the strike started a major fire.

Emergency service personnel try to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in Odesa.Credit: Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP

General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said at the weekend that his outnumbered and outgunned forces had been pushed back from their positions in the eastern Donetsk region. Some analysts believe Russia could be on the verge of launching a new full-blown offensive, putting the timing “between May and July”.

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”.

It was the third Russian attack on Odesa, Ukraine, this week.Credit: Ukrainian Emergency Service/AP

“I have a clear strategic objective: Russia cannot win in Ukraine,” Macron said. “If Russia wins in Ukraine, there will be no security in Europe. Who can pretend that Russia will stop there? What security will there be for the other neighbouring countries, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and the others?”

Macron again stated his view that Europe must devise a defence system of its own because it could no longer count on the United States to protect the bloc through NATO, given Republican candidate Donald Trump’s comments and deep divisions within his party.

This would include not only the EU but the European Political Community, a grouping of EU and non-EU states, such as Britain, Macron said. He also said Europe faced aggression from Russia that was both military and aimed at internal disruption through disinformation and cyberattacks.

On Thursday, NATO issued a statement saying members were “deeply concerned” about recent malign activities on Allied territory, namely affecting Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the United Kingdom.

“These incidents are part of an intensifying campaign of activities which Russia continues to carry out across the Euro-Atlantic area, including on Alliance territory and through proxies,” it said.

Hungary, whose leader, Prime Minister Victor Orban, is seen as the strongest Putin supporter in Europe, took issue with Macron’s latest statements.

“If a NATO member commits ground troops, it will be a direct NATO-Russia confrontation, and then it will be World War III,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.

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