Conflict With NATO Inevitable if Western Troops Go to Ukraine

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that a conflict between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will be inevitable if European countries involve their troops directly in the Ukrainian conflict.

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“In this case, we need to talk not about probability, but about inevitability, and that's how we evaluate it,” Peskov said during a press conference in which he commented on recent statements by French President Emmanuel Macron.

During a meeting on Ukraine in Paris on Monday, Macron said European countries face the "strategic need" to defeat Russia. To achieve this objective, the French president did not rule out the option of sending troops to Ukraine.

"Peskov said that NATO countries must also evaluate the potential consequences of such actions, and realize that this is 'absolutely not in the interests of these countries'," the Turkish agency AA reported.

"He further said several countries in the West possess a 'fairly sovereign assessment' of the consequences and potential dangers of deployment of troops to Ukraine, and that there is no consensus on this matter," it added.

The French president's statements generated immediate reactions from other European leaders who do not contemplate the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.

"NATO and its allies are providing unprecedented military aid to Ukraine. We have done so since 2014 and changed course after the Russian invasion. But there are no plans for NATO troops to fight on the ground in Ukraine," he said a NATO official, as reported by Le Monde.

"What was agreed from the beginning among ourselves and with each other also applies to the future, namely that there will be no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European states or NATO states," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz emphasized.