MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/. A snap public opinion poll in France indicates that French society is categorically against sending troops to Ukraine, Russian Ambassador to Paris Alexey Meshkov said.
After a meeting in the Paris on February 26, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the participants had looked at sending ground troops to Ukraine. Although no consensus was reached on this topic, he left the door open for such a scenario in the future.
"Comments that followed this statement were quite reasonable - that this was an unclear and anti-French statement because what sort of the deployment of NATO troops could be meant? Seventy-five percent of the French, according to a snap poll, are categorically against sending French armed forces to Ukraine," he said inn an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
"Although we know that French nationals are fighting there," he recalled. "Not long ago, the French ambassador was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry after the death of 40 French soldiers in Ukraine." But, in his words, French society is "absolutely unready" to any escalation in Ukraine.
The Russian ambassador noted that Macron’s statement caused a catatonic shock rather than public outcry because no one in France and most of European countries "have fully understood" it. "And they are asking a question: why and what for, and why now," Meshkov said.
"There are many explanations. The key one is that Macron tried to get actively back in Europe’s political arena and even in global arena now that the United States is losing its influence on what is going on," the Russian diplomat went on to say. "The second reason is that this was an element of political struggle ahead the upcoming elections to the European Parliament and an attempt to handle opposition parties, which quite expectedly spoke against this statement."
He stressed however that despite this France, at least its establishment, has no final answer to this question.
The Paris conference on Ukraine, after which this statement was made, was attended by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Polish President Andrzej Duda and prime ministers from around 20 EU countries. The United States was represented by US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O'Brien, and David Cameron represented the United Kingdom. After the conference, most of the participating counties pledged that they have no plans to send troops to Ukraine to fight against Russia.