NATO has no plans to send troops to Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the Associated Press that the military alliance does not plan to send troops to Ukraine. The comment was made against the background of reports that a number of Western countries may be considering sending their combat units to a country that has been resisting Russian aggression for the third year.

As Stoltenberg said, NATO allies provide unprecedented support to Ukraine. “We have been doing this since 2014 and increased our efforts after the start of the large-scale invasion. But there are no plans to deploy NATO troops in Ukraine now,” the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization emphasized.

On the eve of a trip to Paris, where on Monday about 20 European leaders, as well as representatives of the United States and Canada, discussed options for increasing aid to Kyiv, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, said that some states are studying the feasibility of concluding bilateral agreements to send their contingents to Ukraine.

Fico emphasized that his government does not plan to offer such support, but the Slovak prime minister did not provide details regarding which countries can consider the relevant agreements or what tasks their troops can perform in Ukraine.

The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Petr Fiala, refused to comment before leaving for Paris, saying that the leaders are meeting to discuss possible options. At the same time, Fiala emphasized that “the Czech Republic is definitely not in the mood to send its troops to Ukraine.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that sending Western contingents to Ukraine “should not be ruled out in the future,” as the full-scale Russian invasion has been going on for three hours, the Associated Press reports.

According to the press secretary of the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, if the European Union and NATO still decide to send their soldiers, then a military conflict with the bloc will be inevitable. “In that case, we should not talk about probabilities, but about inevitability,” Peskov said.