By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Portal) – Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign intelligence chief said French President Emmanuel Macron's refusal to rule out sending European troops to fight Russian soldiers in Ukraine was extremely dangerous and irresponsible.
Macron said last month that there was no consensus on sending European troops to fight in Ukraine but that nothing should be ruled out, although the United States and other European members of the alliance have said there are no plans to do so.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Moscow's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and President Vladimir Putin has warned that the West risks provoking a nuclear war if it sends troops to fight in Ukraine .
Asked about Macron's comments, Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the main successor to the First Directorate of the KGB's foreign espionage department, said they were deeply irresponsible.
“This shows the high level of political irresponsibility of today’s European leaders, in this case the French president,” Naryshkin told state television on Tuesday. “These statements are extremely dangerous.”
“It is sad to see this, sad to observe and sad to understand that the negotiating capacity of the current elites in Europe and the North Atlantic is at a very low level,” he said. “They are less and less likely to show any common sense at all.”
Russia and the United States have the world's largest nuclear arsenals. President Joe Biden has warned that a conflict between Russia and NATO could trigger World War III.
After the Russian invasion in 2022, Western leaders said they would help Ukraine defeat Russian troops on the battlefield and expel Russian troops. In 2022, Ukraine has recaptured large areas.
But Kiev's counteroffensive in 2023 failed to penetrate heavily entrenched Russian lines, and Russian forces have advanced into Ukrainian territory just as U.S. support for Ukraine is embroiled in domestic political debates.
Russia controls almost a fifth of the territory internationally recognized as Ukraine.
(Reporting by Maxim Rodionov in London, Ron Popeski in Winnipeg, Canada, and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Alison Williams and Gerry Doyle)