Is NATO inching closer to having troops in Ukraine?
Poland’s foreign minister seems to be lending support to French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that NATO troops could end up on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Speaking at a conference in Warsaw commemorating the 25th anniversary of Poland joining NATO held at Warsaw University on March 10, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said he “appreciates French President Emmanuel Macron’s initiative because it is about Putin fearing us rather than us being afraid of Putin.”
Macron is reported to have told the leaders of French political parties that France would be ready to send its troops to Ukraine if Russia approached Kyiv or Odessa.
In his speech, Sikorski noted that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, 140 out of 190 UN member states voted to condemn it, thereby setting a legal framework denouncing the aggression as unacceptable. He added that by invading Ukraine, Russia showed that it is incapable of accepting Western values of peaceful coexistence with its neighbors, forcing NATO to return to its original role.
That is why “the West should implement a form of creative and asymmetrical escalation,” he said, adding that “the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine is not unthinkable.”