Macron Reaffirms That Sending NATO Troops To Fight Russia in Ukraine Shouldn’t Be Ruled Out

The French president said if Ukraine made the request for troops, NATO would 'legitimately have to ask ourselves this question'

French President Emmanuel Macron has again reaffirmed that he believes NATO should not rule out the idea of sending troops to Ukraine to fight Russia despite the obvious risk of nuclear war.

When asked in an interview published in The Economist if he stood by his position about possibly sending ground troops to Ukraine, Macron said, “Absolutely. As I said, I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out.”

He said if Russian forces broke through Ukrainian lines and Ukraine requested NATO troops, it should be seriously considered. “If the Russians were to break through the front lines, if there were a Ukrainian request—which is not the case today—we would legitimately have to ask ourselves this question,” he said.

Macron noted that many NATO countries ended up sending weapons systems to Ukraine that they had previously ruled out. “At the NATO summit in the summer of 2022, we all ruled out the delivery of tanks, deep-strike missiles, aircraft. We are now all in the process of doing this, so it would be wrong to rule out the rest,” he said.

The French president first floated the idea of sending Western ground troops to Ukraine earlier this year, and despite backlash from Russia and fellow NATO members, he has not backed down on his position. Macron’s comments have highlighted the fact that there are a small number of NATO special operations troops inside Ukraine.

But what Macron is discussing would mean direct fighting between NATO and Russian troops. Moscow has said that a NATO ground troops deployment would make a direct Russia-NATO war inevitable, which could quickly turn nuclear.

Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.