The French president had previously laid out conditions for sending Western troops to aid Kiev
Emmanuel Macron’s statements about the possibility of sending Western forces into Ukraine have only escalated tensions and do not serve any other purpose, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said on Saturday.
His comments come after the French President stated in an interview with The Economist this week that his country could consider sending its troops to help Kiev “if the Russians were to break through the front lines” and if there was a “Ukrainian request” for such assistance. Macron also outlined his “strategic objective” of making sure Russia does not win in Ukraine, claiming such a development would threaten European security.
Speaking to the newspaper Corriere della Sera, Crosetto claimed that while he personally can’t judge the president of a “friendly country like France,” at the same time, he can’t understand “the purpose and usefulness of these declarations, which objectively raise tension.”
The minister also ruled out the possibility that Italy would ever send its forces to intervene directly in the Ukraine conflict. “Unlike others, we have in our system an explicit prohibition on direct military interventions, outside of what is provided by the laws and the constitution,” Crosetto explained. “We can only envisage armed interventions following an international mandate, for example in the implementation of a UN resolution.”
He further noted that aside from it being impossible to send Italian troops to Ukraine, doing so “would trigger a further spiraling of the conflict, which would not be of benefit above all to the Ukrainians themselves.”
“In short, the conditions for our direct involvement do not exist,” Crosetto said.
Macron’s latest hints at direct Western involvement on the ground in Ukraine have also been dismissed by other NATO countries, notably Hungary and Slovakia.