After the triple conciliatory handshake in Berlin with the German chancellor Olaf Solz and the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk – but also with the issue of sending ground forces to Ukraine being kept quiet – the French president Emmanuel Macron brought back the relevant scenarios, speaking to the major popular newspaper Le Parisien. It is interesting that these statements are published only today, but they were made on the return plane, after Macron left Berlin.

It seems that the French president did not hold back and, during the flight, he chose the journalist of Le Parisien to reaffirm his positions: That “at a given moment” ground operations from the West in Ukraine may be considered necessary, which he himself personally is avoided. “Perhaps at some point,” he said, “although I don’t want it and I won’t take the initiative, there will have to be operations on the ground, whatever they are, to deal with the Russian forces.”

“Let’s prepare for all scenarios»

“France’s strength is that we can do it” Macron said, adding: “It is our duty to prepare for all scenarios. We must not be afraid, we do not have a great force against usRussia is a medium-sized power. With a nuclear arsenal of course, but with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP), much lower than that of the Europeans”.

Ruling out any disagreement with the German chancellor, Emmanuel Macron explained: “I wanted to come to Germany quickly so that a negative atmosphere does not prevail, that there are strategic differences, this is not the case. We have a very large overlap of views on the goals and the situation, but the way in which all of that is translated is different.”

And this is because, as Emmanuel Macron argues in the continuation of his Sunday interview, “Germany has a strategic culture of great prudence, non-intervention and keeps its distance from nuclear energy. This is a different model than the one in France, which has nuclear weapons and has maintained and strengthened a professional army’.