Austria will not send its military, police or civil servants as instructors to Ukraine, said the country's foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt.
The minister was asked if he supports the idea discussed by the European Union to send instructors to train Ukrainian soldiers in the war zone.
„I do not want to get ahead of the discussion because there is still no consensus among the member states on this issue. In any case, I'm skeptical. As for Austria, I rule out the possibility of sending soldiers, police or civil servants to Ukraine”, answered Schallenberg.
He also wonders what would happen if French or Dutch soldiers were killed in Ukraine. “Would the obligation to provide assistance under Article 5 then apply? How would the West react to this?“ - asked the minister.
It is about Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which refers to the principle of collective defense of NATO. According to this article, an attack against one of the members of the North Atlantic Alliance is considered an attack against all members of the alliance.
The discussion of the issue of the deployment of European troops in Ukraine began after a speech by French President Emmanuel Macron. In late February, he said that sending troops was “mentioned among the options” for Western action in the context of the conflict, but there is no “consensus”. After his speech, many Western politicians rejected such intentions.
Then Macron's idea of sending troops morphed into a potential initiative to send French military instructors to Ukraine. At the end of May, Reuters wrote that the French president could soon announce such a plan. However, at the beginning of June, the country's Prime Minister Gabriel Attal assured that France “does not have such a project”, although he noted that the issue of sending instructors to Ukraine is not taboo.
At the beginning of June, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that there are reasons to believe that French instructors are already working in Ukraine. According to the minister, these servicemen, regardless of their status, represent a legitimate military target.