Russian Roulette: Why Macron raised the stakes on Ukraine – RTE.ie

At the Ukraine summit in Paris on Monday, President Emmanuel Macron made a startling announcement.

"We will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win this war," he told reporters.

"Everything is possible," he said, including sending Western troops to Ukraine.

It seemed a clear escalation in the West's support for Kyiv. It has also signalled a decisive shift by President Macron.

In late 2021 he was the holdout leader exhausting every diplomatic initiative to get Vladimir Putin to change course, even warning against the west "humiliating" Russia.

Now he was presenting himself as the standard bearer of a more robust European response as the war enters its third year.

The Paris summit, at which Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Ireland had sent mine clearing units to Ukraine, came on the heels of the second anniversary of Mr Putins invasion, the death of Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, and the setback on the battlefield with Russian troops capturing the strategically important city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region.

French officials insist that an acceleration in a French-led response has been evolutionary and not an overnight conversion.

In particular, Paris believes Russia has intensified its aggressive behaviour, not just in Ukraine, but in Africa and the Caucuses, and in overt disinformation campaigns targeting EU citizens which officials say can be traced to Moscow (in particular, the spray-painting of 200 Star of David symbols on buildings in Paris).

While the EUs response in February 2022 has been largely unified, with 13 sanctions packages against Russia, some 80 billion in economic and military support and the taking in of 4.3 million Ukrainians fleeing the war, Mr Macron is said to have realised it is no longer enough, not least because Ukrainian frontline troops are at the point of physical exhaustion.

The change of gear reflects a deeper French anxiety: that a Russian victory would be catastrophic for Europe, that countries in Africa and Asia would come to the conclusion that neither the US, under a possible second Trump administration, nor Europe have the appetite to attempt to guarantee peace and stability in the world.

For France to interpret a new geopolitical role which looks to Eastern Europe is a significant departure.

"While France had long opposed the geopoliticisation of EU and NATO policies toward the Eastern neighborhood," writes David Cadier, assistant professor of international relations at Sciences Po for Carnegie Europe.

"It is now openly embracing and even promoting it. Previously, approaching the post-Soviet space as an object of hard-power competition as done by the Kremlin or the George W Bush administration was seen in Paris as detrimental to these countries security and to Europes stability and independent agency," he says.

President Macron signalled that change in a speech in Bratislava in May last year, during which he virtually apologised for not taking eastern European warnings about the Russian threat seriously, and for his over-egged overtures to Vladimir Putin on the eve of the invasion.

The speech asserted not just a need, according to the French president, to "forge a more sovereign European capacity when it comes to energy, technology and military capabilities", but also to anchor Ukraine, as well as Moldova, Georgia and the Western Balkans, in the European political and military sphere (in July last year France supported Ukraines accession to NATO and in December all 27 EU leaders, with the exception of Hungarys Viktor Orbn, agreed to open EU accession negotiations with Kyiv).

The Bratislava speech went down well in central and eastern Europe, where unhappiness about high-handed French attitudes going back to Jacques Chirac has long festered.

A survey of diplomats, academics and journalists by the Think Visegrad foundation detected "a real, concrete and significant change in Frances policies towards Ukraine, Russia, and their region".

This is not cost-free for President Macron at home or abroad.

At home his comments after Mondays meeting were attacked by the far-right and far-left, who accused him of escalating the conflict.

French voters are evenly divided between those who believe Europe should support Ukraine in recapturing Russian-occupied territories and those who believe Europe should push Ukraine towards the negotiating table, according to a poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

There was pushback too from Frances allies on the notion of NATO or EU member states sending troops.

"Everyone must do more for Ukraine," Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz said after the meeting, but "one thing is clear: There will be no ground troops from European states or NATO".

NATO officials have echoed the sentiment, while the US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said: "President [Joe] Biden has been clear that the US will not send troops to fight in Ukraine."

On Tuesday, the French foreign minister Stphane Sjourn told the Assemble Nationale that there was no question of French troops deploying to Ukraine to combat Russian soldiers.

A French presence could involve "mine clearance, cyber defence, the production of weapons on site[which] could require a presence on Ukrainian territory, without crossing the threshold of fighting. Nothing should be ruled out".

French officials insist Mr Macron is using strategic ambiguity to keep Russia off-balance.

On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin threatened European countries with nuclear attack if ground troops entered Ukraine.

"Macron wants to send a signal of strength to Russia," says Jana Puglierin, Senior Policy Fellow with ECFR Berlin.

"But for deterrence to work, it must be credible. By stating that he does not rule out the use of ground troops, he has unnecessarily introduced a potential for division into NATO, whose member states are extremely sceptical on this issue. This is no way to promote European unity and strength," she says.

However, the reference to sending troops overshadowed other highly significant moves on President Macrons part.

He appeared to drop a long-standing French demand that the European defence sector should be prioritised when sending weapons to Ukraine, including the one million artillery shells the EU promised Ukraine but which has not yet been delivered, rather than sourcing them from producers elsewhere.

At his news conference on Monday evening, President Macron told reporters that France was leading the so-called "Artillery Coalition", one of six endeavours through which western countries team up with Ukraine to meet its needs across a range of military capabilities, which also include ground-air defence, armour, air forces (led by the US and the Netherlands) and maritime security.

Ukraine is suffering from an acute shortage of artillery shells, being able to fire one tenth of what Russia can deploy, an asymmetry which has been blamed for the loss of Avdiivka and for high Ukrainian casualties.

"All of us at the table have undertaken to dig down to the bottom of the stocks that remain available," Mr Macron told reporters, "to identify third countries that can be brought on board, in the various categories of ammunition, and also reach out when it comes to all new solutions that are put forward, to solicit third countries".

Across the board, EU and NATO members are increasing defence spending to make up for the fall in investment which followed the end of the Cold War.

However, the defence sector is struggling to replenish conventional stocks which have been shipped to Ukraine and to ensure that Kyiv has the capabilities it needs to defend itself in the long run.

"Europes defence industrial base shrank after the Cold War and is fragmented along national lines," writes Luigi Scazzieri, a Senior Research Fellow, in a paper for the Centre for European Reform (CER).

He says: "It is structured to produce in relatively low volumes and has struggled to increase its output. Lack of certainty over the trajectory of defence budgets and future orders also makes many companies unwilling to make costly investments in expanding their production capacity.

"The continuing lack of coordination between member-states in investing their defence budgets is making it difficult to generate economies of scale and has given rise to competing orders."

Russias invasion has prompted the EU to deepen defence cooperation.

In a meeting at Versailles in March 2022, hosted by President Macron, EU leaders agreed to invest "more and better in defence capabilities".

The European Commission followed up by creating a Defence Joint Procurement Task Force to identify bottlenecks and shortfalls in supply chains across different capabilities.

In July 2023, the EU adopted the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), legislation that would ensure EU funding is used to help defence firms to increase ammunition production.

The EU is currently mobilising military support to Ukraine through the European Peace Facility (EPF), an existing off-budget mechanism that reimburses member states who help Ukraine build resilience and to help civilian populations targeted by Russian drones and missiles.

Between 2022-24, the EPF has mobilised 6.1 billion for Ukraines war effort.

In a Dil answer in April last year, Tnaiste Michel Martin said Irelands contribution in non-lethal assistance (medical equipment, food, personal protective clothing and fuel) amounted to 122 million.

Ireland has also contributed to the EUs Military Assistance Mission (EUMAM Ukraine), which is also aimed at enhancing the Ukrainian Armed Forces military capability by training 15,000 members within EU member states.

EUMAM Ukraine has a mandate to provide individual, collective and specialised training to up to 15,000 Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel over multiple locations in the territory of EU member states, subject to the explicit consent of each host member state.

Irelands involvement in these training missions is coordinated by a senior staff officer within the EUs Military Planning and Conduct Capability department in Brussels as well as in Strausberg, Germany.

As he arrived at the Paris meeting, Mr Varadkar told reporters that Irish Defence Forces teams had been training Ukrainian personnel in Poland in the operation of so-called Mine Flail units, vehicle-mounted equipment which clears paths through minefields by literally flailing the ground in front of them to trigger mines.

Two such units had already arrived in Ukraine.

Irelands provision of such equipment has inevitably stirred up the debate on neutrality, a policy position on which a sharper spotlight will fall as the European Union seeks ways to deepen defence cooperation in the light of Russias invasion of Ukraine and the risk that a second Trump presidency could leave Europe militarily exposed.

The EU is already cooperating more deeply on defence.

It set up the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) in 2017, while the Strategic Compass, endorsed by member states in March 2022, encourages national capitals to invest more in defence and to identify areas where member states could collectively develop new capabilities, such as through PESCO, of which Ireland is a participant.

EU diplomats tread carefully when asked about Irelands neutrality, now that we share that particular bench with only Malta, Austria and Cyprus (Sweden and Finland have joined NATO), but at a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference, Leo Varadkar was asked several times about the charge of Irish "free-riding" on European security (a charge he politely, but firmly, rebuffed).

The Irish debate, and the consultative forums on security, are being watched with interest in EU capitals, not least Paris.

Ireland and France have had a strategic and security dialogue since the former President Francois Hollandes visit to Dublin in 2016, and officials from both ministries of defence have had meetings every 18 months, including one between high-level experts in December.

Security and defence have also been discussed during official visits to Paris by both Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin as Taoisigh, and when President Macron came to Ireland in June 2021 (the French Embassy in Dublin has hosted a conference on defence and security).

French officials speak of each member state having their own "path, rhythm and objectives" when it comes to national security.

Irish officials in Brussels insist that neutrality is never questioned in diplomatic exchanges.

However, one EU diplomat observed: "We would certainly say that Ireland, like each and every other EU member state, has to now increase its defence spending and it has to think more European when it comes to defence.

"No country can consider security in isolation."

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Russian Roulette: Why Macron raised the stakes on Ukraine - RTE.ie