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French President reaffirms possibility of sending troops to Ukraine (www.france24.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"I'm not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out," said French President Emmanuel Macron when asked if he stood by comments earlier this year not excluding the sending of Western troops that sent shockwaves around Europe.

Macron said "if Russia decided to go further, we will in any case all have to ask ourselves this question" of sending troops, describing his refusal to rule out such a move as a "strategic wake-up call for my counterparts".

He described Russia as "a power of regional destabilisation" and "a threat to Europeans' security".

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago

Macron was the leader that was being mocked for trying to keep talking to Putin and trying to find a way to talk through the crisis.

This reversal in posture I think is extremely telling of how far gone the Russian leadership is... When even your best interlocutor turns away, even more when they turn hardliner against you, that means they have seen something that has deeply deeply shaken them.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Russian leaders will answer that Tsar Alexander reached Paris when asked how far is far enough for them.

Putin's the idiot that's gonna see a French man sit and watch in Paris as the soldiers reach Moscow.

[+] [email protected] -21 points 6 months ago (7 children)

He can't do that. If French soldiers march into the war officially, Putin would fight against a NATO state. Making it mandatory for every other NATO state to also jump in. Viola we have WW3.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

That's literally not how it works, anything else is Russian fearmongering.

Also a bunch of countries fucking up a single country who can't even conquer their neighbor does not a world war make. If it did, the Gulf War would be called WW3 already.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago

If French were to send soldiers to Ukraine those would be French soldiers, not NATO soldiers. Attack against them is not an attack against a NATO country. Countries like Turkey and USA have been involved in their own conflicts aswell where they have had their troops attacked and this haven't triggered article 5 either. That's not how it works.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

NATO is a defensive alliance. Joining a defensive war of your neighbor / any other country on their side isn't defense of your country. So it doesn't apply. Further, even if Russians attacked France, then it most likely wouldn't apply if they had an army in Ukraine. Otherwise any country could support some movement for independence in a different country, start an uprising, join them and then call article 5 to take territory.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Bud, read article 5 before you spout nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

It's a very very risky escalation not because of NATO, but because France is a nuclear power in its own right. And if nukes start flying around, NATO or no NATO, WW3 has already started.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

It's not that simplistic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I barely have a surface level understanding of how NATO works and I know this is false. Try harder.