The presence of Western troops in Ukraine is an “open secret,” Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, said in recent remarks to the German press.
“As [German Chancellor Olaf Scholz] has said, there are already some troops from big [Western] countries in Ukraine,” he told the German Press Agency on March 20.
“In Polish, we have an expression—‘tajemnica poliszynela’—which describes a secret that everyone knows,” Mr. Sikorski added.
Last month, the German chancellor defended his reluctance to provide Ukraine with long-range Taurus missile systems, which, he said, had to be operated by trained German personnel.
“German soldiers must at no point ... be linked to targets that this [Taurus] system reaches,” Mr. Scholz, who has ruled out sending German troops to Ukraine, said on Feb. 26.
The German leader has thus far sought to avoid bringing his country into direct confrontation with Russia, citing fears of a wider conflict.
“What is being done in the way of target control ... on the part of the British and French can’t be done in Germany,” Mr. Scholz added.
His remarks were widely interpreted as a tacit admission that military personnel from the United Kingdom and France were already on the ground in Ukraine.
London and Paris have provided Kyiv with their own long-range missile systems—the Storm Shadow and SCALP systems, respectively—both of which require trained operators.
The German leader’s remarks—and their implications—drew angry responses from UK officials.
Quoted by Politico on Feb. 29, Alicia Kearns, head of the British Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, described Mr. Scholz’s apparent admission as “irresponsible and a slap in the face to [Germany’s] allies.”
A UK Defense Ministry spokesperson said: “Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow and its targeting processes are the business of the armed forces of Ukraine.”
The response from Paris, however, was noticeably more muted.
Indeed, French President Emmanuel Macron has made no secret of his willingness to at least consider the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.
Last month, he surprised many observers when he suggested that EU member-states could deploy troops to help fight Russia’s two-year-old invasion.
“Nothing should be ruled out,” he said at a Feb. 26 meeting of EU leaders in Paris.
On March 7, he went even further, saying that Paris should have “no limits” in its approach to Russia’s invasion, which in recent weeks has continued to register notable gains.
Other leading allies of Kyiv—including the United States, the UK, and Germany—have all been quick to distance themselves from the French leader’s assertions.
Nevertheless, Mr. Macron’s controversial proposals have been welcomed by a handful of other leading European figures—including Mr. Sikorski.
On March 8, Poland’s top diplomat said the deployment of Western troops was “not unthinkable,” voicing appreciation for the French leader’s “initiative.”
Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, has expressed similar sentiments, recently stating, “No form of support for Ukraine can be excluded.”
Czech President Petr Pavel also recently joined the chorus, claiming that neither international law nor the UN Charter forbade NATO-aligned troops “from assisting in the work in Ukraine.”
‘Irreparable Consequences’
Officials in Moscow, meanwhile, have long asserted that Western military personnel are already on the ground in Ukraine.In January, Russia’s military claimed to have killed 60 “French mercenaries” in a “precision strike” carried out in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
Paris was quick to dismiss the charge, stating: “France has no mercenaries in Ukraine—or anywhere else.”
At the time, the French Foreign Ministry described Moscow’s allegation as “another clumsy manipulation” by Russia.
Since then, however, Moscow has only doubled down on its claims—driven in large part by Mr. Macron’s increasingly strident rhetoric.
This week, Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), claimed that hundreds of French troops were being primed for imminent deployment.
“According to information obtained by the SVR, a [French military] contingent is already being prepared to be sent to Ukraine,” he said on March 19.
He went on to estimate the size of the alleged French force at “roughly 2,000 troops.”
Paris condemned what it called “irresponsible” claims coming from Moscow.
The spy chief’s assertions “once again illustrate Russia’s systematic use of disinformation,” the French Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Despite the denials, Moscow appears to be taking the SVR’s assessment seriously.
“The deployment of foreign military contingents to Ukraine is fraught with very negative—perhaps irreparable—consequences,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on March 21.
Pyotr Tolstoy, deputy speaker of Russia’s State Duma, its lower house of parliament, was more forthright.
“We will kill all French soldiers who enter the territory of Ukraine,” he said in televised comments. “All of them.”
