BERLIN, June 9. /TASS/. The German government does not support French President Emmanuel Macron's idea to create an EU coalition to jointly send instructors to Ukraine, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported.
According to it, last week French Chief of the Defence Staff Thierry Burkhard sent a letter to the United States and about ten European states, including the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, the three Baltic states, Denmark and Sweden, in which he invited the respective governments to participate in the training mission in Ukraine as part of a multinational "coalition of the willing." At the same time, Paris ignored the German government: the invitation letter was not received by the German Defense Ministry. According to the newspaper, Germany's ruling coalition has repeatedly made clear in recent weeks during internal discussions in Brussels that the German servicemen will not take part in the training mission. But the Americans did so in advance - and still received a letter of invitation, Welt am Sonntag pointed out.
Macron is trying to hold the training mission under the auspices of the already existing European Union Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM Ukraine). However, EU diplomats report that there is resistance in Brussels to Paris' ideas. Most EU countries would oppose training in Ukraine. The governments of Germany, Italy and Spain, for example, fear that training on the ground could create a significant risk of escalation and draw the West deeper into the conflict in Ukraine. Hungary, for its part, said at a meeting of EU defense ministers in late May that Ukraine no longer had a realistic chance of winning, the newspaper emphasized.
However, EU diplomatic circles also said that from a military point of view there were good reasons to train Ukrainian soldiers in their own country. The training would then be better tailored to the needs of Ukrainian soldiers and the military would not have to leave their country for training, Welt am Sonntag concluded.
On June 6, Macron said in an interview with the TF1 and France 2 TV channels that France intends to train 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers and provide them with ammunition, for which it will send instructors to Ukraine. According to the Le Monde newspaper, the French president wants to create an EU coalition to jointly send instructors to Ukraine. Later, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby pointed out that the US rejection of the idea of sending its troops to Ukraine would remain in force in the future, regardless of France's decisions.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the appearance of foreign military contingents in Ukraine would be fraught with extremely negative, even irreparable consequences.