UKRAINE – “We are not at war with Russia,” Emmanuel Macron recalled in a televised speech on Wednesday (March 2nd) on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched a few days earlier by Vladimir Putin.
Of course, France is not at war, but its army is not idle, as evidenced by the deployment of 550 troops and dozens of vehicles in Romania on Tuesday (March 1st) to boost NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe.
As you can see in our video report at the top of the article, HuffPost tracked the departure of these troops from their air base in Istria (Bouches-du-Rhône), in the south of France, in addition to the heavy load of 170 vehicles in Antonov 124-100, one of the largest aircraft in the world, and also Ukrainian construction. These forces are joining the Constanta base on the Black Sea coast, just 200 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
For the French army, it is primarily a matter of “deploying ground or air forces in the Baltic states, in Romania, in Poland, to send a clear signal to Russia”, to tell it, “that it is not about their part of the least a desire to invade the land or airspace of NATO member states “, explained the spokesman of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces Hervé Grange at the beginning of the week in front of the microphone of franceinfo.
Therefore, for the time being, there can be no question of intervening against the Russian army in Ukraine, unless the conflict exceeds the borders in one of the NATO countries. In a rare statement to the armies on Monday night, Emmanuel Macron said he “relied” on their “great vigilance” and their “necessary restraint during possible intervention” in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
See also The HuffPost: “Sanctions need to be tougher”: These French Ukrainians are calling for help