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Germany’s deputy chancellor said there was “no chance” of sending ground troops to Ukraine and, in a rebuff to France, told Paris it should instead supply Kyiv with more weapons.
Robert Habeck rejected French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion on Monday that a troop deployment to Ukraine should not be ruled out, as leaders from across the Nato military alliance also rounded on the idea.
Asked if sending troops to Ukraine was an option, Macron said the potential had been discussed by western leaders even as there was “no consensus today” on the matter. “But nothing should be excluded. We will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win this war.”
His comments and the swift rebuttals from many of his European allies show the difficult balancing act western powers face as they search for ways to increase support for Kyiv at a critical moment in the more than two-year-long war while avoiding a wider escalation.
Russia warned on Tuesday that deploying troops would make a full-scale war against Nato inevitable.
“I’m pleased that France is thinking about how to increase its support for Ukraine, but if I could give it a word of advice — supply more weapons,” Habeck said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said western powers had agreed “that there would be no ground troops on Ukrainian soil, no soldiers sent there from European states or Nato states”, comments that were echoed by his counterparts in Poland, Italy and the Czech Republic.
Germany is Europe’s biggest provider of military support to Ukraine by far, and has long been critical of France’s far more modest contribution, despite their similar-sized defence budgets.
France said that it did not keep large stockpiles of old weapons that it could offload to Ukraine and that it has instead supplied more sophisticated arms, notably its SCALP cruise missile.
A Nato official said there were no plans for the alliance to put combat troops on the ground. “Ukraine has the right to self-defence, and we have the right to support them,” the official said.
But a senior European defence official said Macron’s statement was about creating deterrence and ambiguity towards Russia, adding: “Everyone knows there are western special forces in Ukraine — they’ve just not acknowledged it officially.”
There was no sign of a retreat from the Élysée Palace on Tuesday. A French official said Macron’s comments were intended as a sign of France’s commitment to defending Ukraine and it was necessary to start a debate among allies about what they may need to do to thwart a Russian victory.
One voice of support for Macron came from Lithuania, where an adviser to the country’s president said they were “openly” discussing whether to send troops to help train soldiers in Ukraine.
Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis added: “Times like these require political leadership, ambition, and courage to think out of the box. The initiative behind the Paris meeting yesterday is well worth considering.”
The Kremlin has said a conflict between Russia and Nato would be inevitable if the western alliance sent troops to fight in Ukraine.
“In that case, it wouldn’t be likely, but inevitable. That’s how we assess it,” Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday.
Peskov said Nato countries should “ask themselves whether it’s in their and their citizens’ interests” after Macron said the idea “could not be ruled out”.
Berlin’s rebuttal comes amid an increasingly fractious domestic row in Germany over the risks of escalating the stand-off with Russia by sending long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
Scholz on Monday said his country might find itself “a participant in the war” if it sent the missiles. “German soldiers must at no point and in no place be linked to targets this [Taurus] system reaches,” Scholz said, neither on the ground in Ukraine, nor “in Germany either”.
In a thinly veiled barb at Germany, Macron pointed out that some allies kept saying “never” to tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles for Ukraine and that two years ago, they offered to send “sleeping bags and helmets”.
“Today [we all realise that] we have to do more, faster and harder, to send missiles and tanks,” he said.
In Paris, officials said on Tuesday that Macron was not suggesting western troops should be sent en masse to the front lines, rather that it was no longer a taboo to rule out involvement so as to preserve what the French president called “strategic ambiguity”.
Additional reporting by Sam Jones in Berlin, Leila Abboud in Paris, Max Seddon in Riga and John Paul Rathbone in London
