The West has to either accept that assessment and nudge Ukraine to the negotiating table or send more than arms and aid. It is going to have to escalate its support and send troops, risking direct confrontation with Russia and the disaster scenario it has tried to avoid since the first days of the war.
This realization has sparked a bitter debate in Europe. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said on February 26 that “a number of NATO and EU member states are considering that they will send their troops to Ukraine on a bilateral basis.” That same day, the French President Emmanuel Macron said that, though “there is no consensus today to send troops on the ground in an official, accepted, and endorsed manner…no option should be discarded.”
Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz shot back that the consensus was “that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil who are sent there by European states or NATO states.” Germany, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg all said there was no plan to send troops to Ukraine. Läs artikel