French President Emmanuel Macron said tonight that his country has “opened the door” to training Ukrainian pilots to fly fighter jets and those training programs should begin immediately.

Macron gave an interview to TF1 a day after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris. When asked if France would send fighter jets to Ukraine, he replied that this issue had not been discussed.

“I wasn’t talking about planes, I was talking about missiles, I was talking about training,” he said, stressing that “there are no taboos” when it comes to training Ukrainian pilots on French planes. “I think such discussions are already underway with the Americans,” he continued, without going into details.

Paris has not yet discussed the possibility of sending fighter jets to Ukraine, explaining that this would require many months of pilot training.

According to Macron, “France’s strategy is simple: we help Ukraine to resist, to organize a counterattack the moment it chooses, so that it can put the whole world at the negotiating table, on the terms it chooses, in order to build a sustainable world for itself.”

Source: APE-MPE, AFP, Reuters.