French President Emmanuel Macron has said a proposed European armed force for possible deployment in Ukraine in tandem with an eventual peace deal could “respond” to a Russian attack if Moscow launched one.
Macron spoke on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) after talks with Ukraine’s president and ahead of a summit in Paris of some 30 nations this week that will discuss the proposed force for Ukraine.
“If there was again a generalised aggression against Ukrainian soil, these armies would be under attack and then it’s our usual framework of engagement,” Macron said.
“Our soldiers, when they are engaged and deployed, are there to react and respond to the decisions of the commander in chief and, if they are in a conflict situation, to respond to it.”
Macron, together with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has been driving an effort to build a coalition of nations willing in one way or another to support the deployment of an armed force in Ukraine, with the aim of securing a lasting peace by dissuading Russia from attacking the country again.
Macron didn’t specify what sort of response he envisaged in the eventuality of a Russian attack.
He said the proposed European forces wouldn’t be stationed in the frontlines in Ukraine, “nor be engaged on the first day opposite Russian forces.”
They would “be forces that dissuade the Russians from attacking again. And by holding important towns, strategic bases, mark the clear support from several European governments and allies,” he said.
“So we are not on the frontlines, we don’t go to fight, but we are there to guarantee a lasting peace. It’s a pacifist approach,” he said. “The only ones who would, at that moment, trigger a conflict, a bellicose situation, would be the Russians if they decided again to launch an aggression.”
Macron is expecting 31 delegations around the table at the presidential Elysee Palace. That’s more than Macron gathered for a first meeting in Paris in February — evidence that the coalition to help Ukraine, possibly with boots on the ground, is gathering steam, according to the presidential office.
The big elephant in the room will be the country that’s missing: the US.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has shown no public enthusiasm for the coalition’s discussions about potentially sending troops into Ukraine after an eventual ceasefire to help make peace stick.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has dismissed the idea of a European deployment or even the need for it.
“It’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic,” he said in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
That’s not the view in Europe. The shared premise upon which the coalition is being built is that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine — starting with the illegal seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and culminating in the 2022 full-scale invasion that unleashed all-out war — shows that he cannot be trusted.
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They believe that any peace deal will need to be backed up by security guarantees for Ukraine, to deter Putin from launching another attempt to seize it.
