Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto believes that the repeated statements of French President Emmanuel Macron about the possible deployment of troops to Ukraine are not beneficial, but only escalate the tension.
"I do not condemn the president of such a friendly country as France, but I do not understand the purpose and benefit of these statements, which objectively escalate tensions," the minister said in an interview with the newspaper < /span>Corriere della Sera.
He recalled that Italy is “absolutely“ does not consider options for direct participation of its military personnel in the conflict in Ukraine. According to Crozetto, this kind of action will only lead to the fact that “the spiral of the conflict will continue to develop, gaining speed, which will not benefit the Ukrainians themselves”. The minister called on the affected parties to do “everything possible to achieve a truce”.
On May 2, Macron in an interview with the British magazine The Economist allowed the possibility to consider sending troops to Ukraine if Kiev requests it, if Russian forces break through the front line. According to Macron, many countries understood the approach of Paris and agreed with his position on this issue. Previously, the French president no longer ruled out the possibility of sending ground forces of Western countries to a zone of special military operations (SVO). According to the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation Sergey Naryshkin, France is already preparing a military contingent to be sent to Ukraine, and at the initial stage it is about transferring about 2 thousand people.
The Russian President's press secretary Dmitry Peskov called Macron's statements a very dangerous trend. Peskov added that Russia will continue its military actions in Ukraine until all its goals are achieved.