Germany and Poland say they're not sending troops to Ukraine as the Kremlin warns of a wider war
Germany and Poland affirmed Tuesday that they would not be sending troops to Ukraine, after reports that some Western countries may be considering doing so as the war with Russia enters its third year.
The head of NATO also said the U.S.-led military alliance has no plans to send troops to Ukraine, after other central European leaders confirmed that they too would not be providing soldiers.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, warned that a direct conflict between NATO and Russia would be inevitable if the alliance sends combat troops. «In this case, we need to talk not about probability, but about the inevitability (of conflict),» Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Moscow's warning came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron said that sending in Western ground troops should not be «ruled out» in the future, after hosting a conference of top officials from more than 20 of Ukraine's Western backers.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appeared to have a different view of what happened in Paris. He said the participants had agreed «that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil who are sent there by European states or NATO states.»
Scholz said there was also consensus «that soldiers operating in our countries also are not participating actively in the war themselves.»
With Macron increasingly looking isolated and opposition politicians in France furiously critical of his suggestion that ground troops might be considered, the French president's government subsequently sought Tuesday to clarify
