The French president once again warns Russia: in the event of a breakthrough of the front in Ukraine, the sending of Western ground troops cannot be ruled out. From the pages of The Economist, Emmanuel Macron returns to a concept expressed in February and which had caused much discussion at the time.
“If the Russians were to go and break through the front lines, if there was a Ukrainian request – which is not the case today – we should legitimately ask ourselves the problem“, he said. “Excluding it a priori is not the same as drawing the conclusions of the last two years,” he added, alluding to the first refusal of the NATO countries to send tanks and planes, and to the subsequent change of heart.
“I don’t rule anything out – the French president then underlined -, because in front of us there is someone who excludes nothing. No doubt we have been too hesitant to define the limits of our actions towards someone who no longer has them and who is the aggressor“.
“I have a clear strategic objective: Russia cannot win in Ukraine. If Russia won in Ukraine, there would be no security in Europe“, Macron then remarked, adding: “We must not rule out anything, because our goal is that Russia can never win in Ukraine.”
“LThe aggressiveness of the Russian reaction to my words proved that it had the desired effectmeaning ‘don’t think we’ll stop here if you don’t’.”
It’s still: “France is a country that has carried out military interventions, even recently. We have dislocated several thousand soldiers in the Sahel to fight terrorism which could pose a threat to us. We did this at the request of sovereign states“, he said in reference to the French Armed Forces’ Operation Barkhane in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger against Islamic terrorist groups.
Tajani: “We will never send soldiers”
“Italy has a balanced position” regarding the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. And “while supporting Ukraine’s right to remain a free country, Italy is not at war with Russia and we will never send Italian soldiers”. Thus the deputy prime minister and foreign minister Antonio Tajani speaking at the working table for Italian companies in Russia. For Ukraine “we try to obtain a just peace”. And to achieve this objective, the vice prime minister had a “long conversation with the Brazilian Foreign Minister”, Mauro Vieira, as “Brazil is the rotating president of the G20”. Speaking at the table, Tajani then explained that he hopes for “an intervention by the G20 and China” to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
“Never have an Italian soldier died in the name of Macron. I think so”, writes Matteo Salvini on social media, posting a card with a quotation mark from the French president.
