BERLIN, March 22. /TASS/. Tallinn has no plans to send troops to Ukraine despite discussions of such a potential move initiated by French President Emmanuel Macron, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said.

"I hope that the idea will prevail that it’s far cheaper and safer to provide Ukrainians with ammunition and weapons so that they can fight rather than think about whether we should carry out an invasion or not. There are no plans for our troops to interfere," he stated in an interview with Germany’s RND newspaper group.

However, Tsahkna pointed out that the Ukrainian crisis required "non-standard decisions" and voiced support for the Macron-initiated discussion, which, according to the top Estonian diplomat, was taking European countries "to a completely new level." "It’s interesting to see how President Macron says just one phrase and everyone in Europe suddenly wakes up," he explained.

On March 13, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas declined to give a direct answer to questions posed by members of the Riigikogu, Estonia’s unicameral parliament, on whether her government planned to send Estonian troops to Ukraine. According to her, she alone cannot make decisions on the matter. Kallas explained to the lawmakers that if such a decision was to be considered, they would in no way be excluded from the process.

After a Paris conference on Ukraine, Macron did not rule out that Western ground troops would be sent to the zone of Russia’s special military operation. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin pointed out on March 19 that France was already training troops to be sent to Ukraine, the number of which would stand at 2,000 at the initial stage. According to Naryshkin, French military personnel have been unofficially present in Ukraine for quite a while; some have already been killed or wounded. After that, the French Armed Forces Ministry made a statement on the X social network that Naryshkin’s comment did not correspond to reality.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on March 14 that Russian forces had killed 147 out of the 356 French mercenaries who had signed up to fight for Ukraine since the start of Moscow’s special military operation. Altogether, 5,926 mercenaries from various countries have been eliminated to date.