A FINANCIAL TIMES report says a senior European defence official has acknowledged that ‘Western special forces’ are unofficially present in Ukraine, despite US-led NATO’s claims of having no such plans to put combat troops on the ground.
‘Everyone knows there are Western special forces in Ukraine, they’ve just not acknowledged it officially,’ the senior European official, whose name was not mentioned, told the Financial Times.
This came in response to Monday’s remarks of French President Emmanuel Macron, who did not rule out the dispatch of Western ground troops to Ukraine, as the world-wide capitalist crisis deepens.
Macron told reporters at a news conference that while he and the other European leaders did not agree on sending military personnel to Ukraine, ‘Nothing should be ruled out’.
‘We will do anything we can to prevent Russia from winning this war,’ Macron boldly asserted.
His remarks, which triggered a continental uproar, came amid Russia’s insistence on the involvement of ‘foreign mercenaries’ participating in the conflict in Ukraine.
In fact, in a recent statement, the Russian Defence Ministry revealed that more than 60 foreign combatants were eliminated in a missile attack last month, with the majority reportedly being fluent in French, according to local reporters.
The revelation comes as a contradiction to a Tuesday announcement by NATO’s top brass, who said there are no plans to send troops to Ukraine, as well as remarks by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg who denied that countries of the Western military alliance were considering the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.
German Chancellor, Olaf Schultz, announced on Tuesday that neither NATO alliance members nor European Union countries will send their ground forces to Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Tuesday that both Europe and the United States should ‘assess’ their support to Ukraine, and warned of a potential conflict if the West realises a debated plan of deploying troops to Ukraine.
Leonid Slutsky, the international affairs head of Russia’s State Duma’s committee, the lower house of the federal assembly of Russia, has claimed that NATO is already involved in the Ukrainian conflict as a provider of lethal weapons being used to kill civilians in Russian cities.
‘The North Atlantic Alliance is already actually involved in the Ukrainian conflict through the supply of lethal weapons that are being used to kill civilians in Russian cities,’ Slutsky told TASS following Macron’s speculation about sending Western troops to Ukraine.
‘If NATO soldiers set foot on the land of Donbass, this will mean transition to the direct military phase of NATO’s struggle with Russia,’ he further added.
‘This spells World War III. I hope that even most frenzied NATO Russophobes are aware of the possible consequences of such decisions,’ Slutsky warned.
In fact Russia has already warned NATO’s European member states of a potential conflict if the West realises a debated plan of deploying troops to Ukraine.
‘In this case, we need to talk not about the likelihood, but about the inevitability of a conflict,’ Peskov was quoted as saying. ‘These countries must also assess and be aware of this, asking themselves whether this is in their interests, as well as the interests of the citizens of their countries,’ he told journalists during a daily call.
The comments came a day after President Emmanuel Macron of France openly discussed the possibility of sending European troops to Ukraine.
On Monday, the French president stated that the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine could not be dismissed, despite the lack of ‘consensus’ on the matter.
‘There is no consensus at this stage … to send troops on the ground,’ Macron said. He added: ‘Nothing should be excluded. We will do everything that we must so that Russia does not win.’
In fact Russia has repeatedly warned of the repercussions of continued Western military assistance to Ukraine. The Western camp has ignored the warning. Kiev has enjoyed a nonstop flow of military support worth billions of dollars since the beginning of the conflict in February 2022.
The crisis of capitalism is driving the western capitalist states towards war with Russia. Workers in the West must stop this war by organising general strikes to bring down their governments, and bring in workers governments and socialist planned economies!