The Chief of the General Staff of the French Armed Forces, General Thierry Burckhard, reacted for the first time on Thursday to the statements of President Emmanuel Macron regarding the possibility of sending “military” troops to Ukraine, Le Monde reports, News.ro reports.

“The intention of the French president is to let Vladimir Putin understand that we are aware of the stakes of the situation in Ukraine,” explained the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, General Thierry Burkhardt.

He stated this at a joint press conference with his Swedish colleague, General Mikael Biden, who is visiting Paris.

“The Ukrainian army does not necessarily need troops to have an effect nearby. It fights with great courage and is already extremely effective,” General Burkhard said.

But “the war will end when Russia stops the offensive. For this to happen, we must show Vladimir Putin that the psychological environment in which he plans his war is not intact,” he added.

The Russian president “based his maneuver on the fact that the West will never enter Ukraine, but will only supply weapons. We have to show him that he will not be able to use this logic to pass because this idea is wrong. The president’s intention is to let Vladimir Putin understand that we are aware of the bet on Ukraine,” Burkhard concluded.

On the other hand, General Burkhard did not distinguish between sending “combatants” and “non-combatants”, as the Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu did on March 8, notes Le Monde.

At the end of the international conference in support of Ukraine, which was attended by about 20 heads of state and government last Monday in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron did not rule out that some of Kyiv’s allied countries would send troops into Ukraine, as he reasoned, “we must do everything possible, so that Russia does not win this war”.

Despite the controversy and the fact that Ukraine’s main allies, including the United States, distanced themselves from Macron’s idea, he continued to push for it, saying he “assumed” the call for a “strategic leap” and disapproved of what he called a “defeatist spirit” in war with Russia.

President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday that Russia was technically ready for nuclear war and that if the United States sent troops to Ukraine, it would be seen as a major escalation of the war.

This was announced on Thursday by the vice-president of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, Petro Tolstoy.Russia is considering the hypothesis of a nuclear strike on Paris.

“We’re counting,” he said.

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