French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed in an interview published by the newspaper “Parisien” that ground operations in Ukraine with the participation of the West may be necessary “at some point”, reported France Press.
“Maybe at some point – I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative for it – there will have to be operations on the ground, whatever they are, to counter the Russian forces,” Macron said.
He gave this interview on Friday after returning from Berlin, where he met with the leaders of Germany and Poland.
“The strength of France is that we can do it,” the president added.
In the German capital, Macron met Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in a show of unity between the three countries.
Repeated statements by Macron, who has refused to rule out sending ground troops to Ukraine, have upset Paris’s allies, led by Germany, and sparked near-unanimous disapproval from the opposition in France.
In his interview with “Parisienne”, the president rejects any disagreements in the Franco-German tandem on this issue. “I wanted to come to Germany very quickly so as not to provoke a debate about the strategic differences that might exist: they don’t exist,” Macron explains.
“There have never been disagreements between the chancellor and I. We have very common views on the goals and the situation. The way of implementing them is different,” he continued, emphasizing the “strategic culture” of the two countries.
“Germany has a strategic culture of great caution, of non-intervention and keeping a distance from nuclear energy,” he explains. “A model that is very different from that of France, which has maintained and strengthened a professional army armed with nuclear weapons,” Macron said again.
The French president added that he had given up a trip to Kiev to go to Berlin on Friday and meet there with Olaf Scholz and Donald Tusk. He assured that he will meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyi in Ukraine before the middle of this month. This trip was once planned for February and then postponed. Macron now says his visit will take place in the coming weeks. It also highlights the complementary nature of the aid that France and Germany can provide.
“Germany spends more than France, it has more budget space, it’s an opportunity. France can do things that Germany can’t,” he told Parisienne.
Macron also says that “We must not let ourselves be intimidated, we are not facing a great power. Russia is a middle power with nuclear weapons, whose GDP is much lower than that of the Europeans, lower than that of Germany , of France,” Macron stressed.
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