The country needs to adapt to an “accumulation of threats,” including the Ukraine conflict, the president has said
French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a project to “mobilize” more young volunteers to boost the ranks of the country’s military amid the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
During an address to the armed forces on Monday, Macron explained the move by the need for France to adapt to an “accumulation of threats.”
“Let us not kid ourselves, the conflict in Ukraine will not end tomorrow or the day after,” he insisted. The French leader was speaking on the same day Donald Trump was inaugurated as US president. During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to swiftly end the fighting between Moscow and Kiev if he returned to the White House.
For France and other EU nations, “the challenge today is to give Ukraine the means to last and to enter any future negotiations from a position of strength,” Macron said.
“The challenge tomorrow, when the hostilities stop, will be to give Ukraine guarantees against any return of war to its territory and assurances for our own security,” he added.
The French president said he had asked the government and military leadership to come up with proposals by May to “allow young volunteers to learn with the armed forces and strengthen their ranks.”
“We will have to better detect volunteers, train them and be able to mobilize them when the day comes to reinforce the armies in mainland France or elsewhere,” he stressed.
Attracting more volunteers should allow France to strengthen the military without re-establishing compulsory national service, which was abolished in 2001, Macron said. Paris’ goal is to have 210,000 active servicemen and 80,000 reservists in the armed forces by 2030.
According to media reports, Macron discussed his idea of sending Western troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force during meetings with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the head of the Polish government, Donald Tusk, earlier this month. Tusk later told journalists that Warsaw has no plans for such action.
Russia has repeatedly warned that it would consider foreign soldiers deployed in Ukraine on a unilateral basis to be legitimate targets. The Kremlin said last month that the issue of peacekeepers could be part of future negotiations on Ukraine, but cautioned that there are currently no conditions for launching any peace talks.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) previously warned that the West wants to freeze the conflict by sending 100,000 peacekeepers to Ukraine, in a bid to essentially “occupy” the country and give Kiev a respite to prepare for a future clash with Moscow.
