The Kremlin on Friday slammed comments by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he repeated that the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out.
In an interview with The Economist published on Thursday, Macron said the question of sending Western troops to Ukraine would “legitimately” arise if Russia broke through Ukrainian front lines and Kyiv made such a request.
Moscow has reacted with fury to previous suggestions the West could deploy forces to support Kyiv, describing it as evidence of NATO’s direct involvement in the conflict and its hostile stance toward Russia.
“The statement is very important and very dangerous,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
Macron “continues to constantly talk about the possibility of direct involvement on the ground in the conflict around Ukraine. This is a very dangerous trend,” he added.
Several NATO countries, including the United States, were quick to push back in February when Macron first said Paris had not ruled out the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.
Peskov also said remarks by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who justified Kyiv striking targets inside Russia, were “dangerous” and “escalatory.”
In a visit to Kyiv on Thursday, Cameron said Ukraine “absolutely has the right to strike back at Russia” and that London did not put “caveats” on how Ukrainian forces use weapons supplied by Britain.
Kyiv has hit a number of energy sites inside Russia in recent months, using drones packed with explosives to strike oil refineries and depots hundreds of kilometers behind the front lines.
Ukraine says those attacks are justified responses to similar attacks by Moscow, arguing that they target a source of fuel and revenue for the Russian military.
Peskov said the recent statements by Macron and Cameron “potentially pose a danger to European security, to the entire European security architecture.”
“We see a dangerous tendency towards escalation in official statements. This is raising our concern,” he added.
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