Poland’s foreign minister seems to be lending support to French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that NATO troops could end up on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Speaking at a conference in Warsaw commemorating the 25th anniversary of Poland joining NATO held at Warsaw University on March 10, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said he “appreciates French President Emmanuel Macron’s initiative because it is about Putin fearing us rather than us being afraid of Putin.”
Macron is reported to have told the leaders of French political parties that France would be ready to send its troops to Ukraine if Russia approached Kyiv or Odessa.
In his speech, Sikorski noted that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, 140 out of 190 UN member states voted to condemn it, thereby setting a legal framework denouncing the aggression as unacceptable. He added that by invading Ukraine, Russia showed that it is incapable of accepting Western values of peaceful coexistence with its neighbors, forcing NATO to return to its original role.
That is why “the West should implement a form of creative and asymmetrical escalation,” he said, adding that “the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine is not unthinkable.”
According to Le Monde newspaper, France is considering sending its special forces to protect critical infrastructure and counter Russian air attacks. This is despite the fact that during a summit on help for Ukraine held in Paris on Feb. 26, Macron acknowledged that there was no consensus with regard to sending NATO forces to Ukraine, and his Defense Minister Sebastian Lecornu assured that all that was being considered were forces to tackle land mines and train Ukrainian soldiers.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, who was at the Paris summit, admitted that the French proposal opened up a fierce debate, while the Polish Defense Minister Władysaw Kosiniak-Kamysz ruled out Poland sending any troops. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Central Europe wanted to see Ukraine properly armed rather than speculate about what the future may bring.
Several newspapers such as the Financial Times, Bild and Le Monde have recently claimed that Western special forces are operating in Ukraine, but this has not been officially admitted.
