Report: Britain and France ‘not ruling out sending troops to Ukraine’

Britain and France have not ruled out sending troops to Ukraine as part of a European coalition, French media has reported, amid fears that the war is edging closer to becoming an all-out conflict between Russia and NATO . Discussions on sending troops from Western armies and private defence companies have been ‘reactivated’, according to French daily newspaper Le Monde, months after President Macron faced opposition from Western leaders over the suggestion.

The talks have also been revisited amid concerns that US support for Kyiv could be pulled by president-elect Donald Trump when he enters office on January 20, sources reportedly claimed. London and Paris could head up a new coalition of European allies of Kyiv, the sources said, with the proposal said to have gained traction in recent weeks due to Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to France for Remembrance Day on November 11.

‘Discussions are underway between the UK and France regarding defence cooperation, particularly with the aim of creating a core of allies in Europe, focused on Ukraine and broader European security,’ a British military source told Le Monde. When asked about the possibility of French boots on the ground in Ukraine, France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, told the BBC : ‘We are not ruling out any option.’

‘We will support Ukraine as intensely and as long as necessary. Why? Because it is our security that is at stake. Each time the Russian army progresses by one square kilometre, the threat gets one square kilometre closer to Europe,’ he said. He also insisted during the interview on Saturday that Western allies should ‘not set and express red lines’ regarding their support for Ukraine, and indicated that French long-range Scalp missiles could be fired into Russia ‘in the logics of self-defence’.

His comments appear to confirm that France has followed the UK and US in giving Kyiv the green light to use long-range missiles it has supplied it with in strikes on Russian territory. As tensions remain high over Kyiv’s use of Western-supplied long-range arms against Russia, Moscow said Monday that its air defences had shot down eight ballistic missiles fired by Ukraine. ‘Air defence forces shot down eight ballistic missiles,’ Moscow’s defence ministry said in a daily briefing. It did not say what kind of ballistic missile Ukraine used or where they were shot down.

Six US-made guided JDAM bombs and 45 aircraft-type drones were also downed in the past 24 hours, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing the defence ministry. Putin last week signed off on an updated version of the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine that broadens the scope for Moscow to turn to its fearsome atomic arsenal on the same day that US-made missiles rained down on Russian soil. The document, first announced in September, allows Putin’s strategic forces to deploy their devastating weapons if Russia or Belarus is threatened by a non-nuclear nation supported by a nuclear power.

It was feared that Ukraine’s strike on an ammunition depot in Russia’s Bryansk region with US-supplied ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) met these criteria, with Moscow saying that it marks a ‘new phase of the Western war’. In a move which Moscow said was a response to the Biden administration’s missile policy shift, Russia launched an ‘Oreshnik’ intermediate-range missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday. Vladimir Putin said the new weapon travelled at 10 times the speed of sound, rendering Ukrainian air defences powerless to shoot it down.

Russian sources said the range was 3,100 miles, with Russian defence officials pointing out that this would allow it to strike anywhere in Europe and the west coast of the United States. Putin has vowed to increase production of the weapon following Thursday’s launch. As aerial warfare in the conflict intensifies, a top NATO official today warned about Russia’s ground forces. The Chair of NATO’s Military Committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer said Moscow’s land forces are bigger now than when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched in February 2022.

But, ‘the quality of those forces has gone down,’ he said, referencing the state of the force’s equipment and the level of training of its soldiers. ‘At the moment, the Russians are not the same threat as in February 2022, so we have a bit of time to prepare ourselves,’ he said, adding that this meant ramping up investments into the defence industry. NATO is expected to hold emergency talks with Kyiv on Tuesday to discuss the escalation of the conflict, which has seen some 10,000 North Korean troops deployed to support Russian forces.

Soldiers sent by Pyongyang are believed to be in Russia’s Kursk region, which is partly occupied by Ukraine, and will be ready to enter combat inside Ukraine ‘soon’, according to Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary. Britain has urged Kyiv’s allies to continue to support its fight against Russia, with foreign minister David Lammy today telling G7 countries to stand with, and equip, Ukraine for as long as it needs. The Foreign Secretary today said the UK government is imposing the biggest sanctions package against Russia’s shadow fleet, including 30 vessels.

Before a meeting of the G7 foreign ministers, he told reporters Britain was announcing ‘the biggest sanctions package of the Russian shadow fleet’, referring to a fleet Britain says uses practices to avoid Western restrictions on Russian oil. ‘It’s hugely important at this G7 that all colleagues… continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it lasts and we are confident that Ukraine can have the funds and the military equipment and kit to get through 2025.’

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