French President Emmanuel Macron will meet on Thursday morning with the heads of the major political parties at the Elysee to discuss “the situation in Ukraine,” the presidency and several political leaders said.

The meeting, scheduled for 10.30am, will precede the debate, followed by a vote expected to take place in parliament on the issue of support for Kiev at Macron’s request, the date of which has not yet been set. .

The French opposition has largely criticized the recent positions of the head of state, who said on Monday that a possible deployment of Western troops to Ukraine in the future should not be ruled out.

Several of France’s European allies, like the United States, have rejected the idea of ​​deploying troops to Ukraine, and the president himself admitted that this option does not garner “consensus today.”

But he said he would like to restore “strategic ambiguity” so that Vladimir Putin’s Russia knows that Kiev’s allies are prepared to do anything to ensure Moscow’s defeat.

The head of France Insubordinate (radical left) Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced a “belligerent verbal escalation” and “irresponsible”, while the president of the National Alarm (far right) Jordan Bardela accused Emmanuel Macron of “losing his temper”.

Also judging that a war with Russia would be “madness”, Socialist Party First Secretary Olivier Faure asked the president for a “meeting with the heads of the political parties”.

President Macron had already invited party leaders to the Elysee after the unprecedented attack on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Israel.