“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”.

  • XenGi@lemmy.chaos.berlinEnglish
    324·
    6 months ago

    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.

    • wandermindEnglish
      24·
      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.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
      181·
      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.

    • Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      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.

    • acargitz@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      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.

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      6 months ago

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