Italian Defense Chief Rules Out Sending Troops to Ukraine as Macron Touts Allied Support

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto ruled out sending troops to Ukraine after French President Emmanuel Macron insisted this week that many EU nations were on board with the plan.

Macron has told the Economist that the question of sending Western troops to Ukraine would be back on the table if Russian forces broke through the frontline and Kiev made such a request. He insisted that many EU countries agreed to this scenario. This is despite the fact that European leaders flatly rejected the idea in February.

"Our position has not changed: we have always said that Ukraine needed every kind of help, and we are giving it, but we have also always ruled out direct military intervention in the conflict," he told the Corriere della Sera daily in an interview out Saturday.

Crosetto said Italian laws explicitly prohibited direct military interventions unless under the UN mandate. An intervention in Ukraine would lead to a wider conflict, which he insisted would not be beneficial to Ukrainians, in the first place.

"In short, there are no conditions for our direct involvement," the minister concluded.

Crosetto said he was reluctant to judge a president of a friendly nation, adding that he did not understand the point of Macron’s declarations, "which are objectively raising tensions."

The Kremlin responded to Macron’s remarks on Friday saying they were "important and very dangerous." Russia is closely monitoring statements coming out of Paris, presidential spokesman Dmintry Peskov said.