Canada was among the NATO countries stressing Tuesday that they have no plans to send troops to Ukraine, after French President Emmanuel Macron floated the prospect of deploying soldiers to help the Eastern European nation defeat invading Russian forces.
The comments prompted Russia to warn of a direct conflict with Canada’s NATO allies, and came at the end of a conference on Ukraine security hosted in Paris. Macron said Western leaders discussed the possibility of sending troops into Ukraine, and that the country’s supporters should rule out nothing in their efforts to help Kyiv achieve victory.
“There’s no consensus today to send — in an official, endorsed manner — troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out,” Macron told reporters at the Élysée Palace.
Asked about Canada’s stance on deploying troops to Ukraine, Defence Minister Bill Blair’s office echoed other NATO members Tuesday — including Germany, the United Kingdom and Poland — who said they have no intention of directly involving their soldiers in the war.
“We will continue to provide Ukraine with comprehensive military assistance, but as a NATO member Canada has no plans to deploy combat troops to Ukraine,” said Blair’s spokesperson Diana Ebadi in a statement to the Star.
Speaking earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland twice declined to rule out sending troops to Ukraine, but suggested Canada is focused on its current troop deployments in nearby Poland and Latvia.
That includes a Canadian military operation training Ukrainian soldiers and medics, and a mission to lead one of eight NATO battle groups stationed in Eastern Europe to deter further Russian aggression.
Leaders from other countries offered clearer takes on alliance discussions about troops in Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Schulz said Tuesday that participants at the Paris conference actually agreed “that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil who are sent there by European states or NATO states,” the Associated Press reported.
In an attempt to clarify Macron’s remarks, French Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu also said Tuesday that discussions at the conference were about possibly doing demining and military training in Ukraine — “not sending troops to wage war against Russia.”
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Kremlin told reporters it would not be in NATO countries’ interest to deploy troops to Ukraine, and warned about the “inevitability” of a confrontation if that were to occur.
Such a conflict could pit countries with nuclear arsenals, such as the United States, France and U.K., against nuclear-armed Russia. So far, just over two years since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the conflict has been contained to a war between those two countries — although Ukraine has received billions of dollars in aid from Western democracies in Europe and North America.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau travelled to Kyiv to mark the anniversary. He also announced that Canada — as part of a G7 pledge to secure long-term support for Ukraine — had reached an agreement with Kyiv to provide military and economic aid over the coming years. The deal includes a pledge of more than $3 billion in 2020 for a sum that will bring Canada’s total military assistance to $4 billion since the start of the broader conflict in 2022, according to Blair’s office.
Freeland, who is also Canada’s finance minister, said Tuesday that she will also continue to press other countries to agree on a plan to “confiscate” assets of Russia’s central bank in an effort to weaken Moscow and pay for Ukrainian reconstruction. Freeland said she recently spoke about the initiative with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about the initiative, as she heads to meetings Tuesday in Brazil with the finance ministers from G7 and G20 countries.
“Aggressor pays,” Freeland said, declaring the invading Russians should fund reconstruction from the war they launched. Freeland also said a show of support is welcome, amid questions over Western solidarity to back Ukraine while billions of dollars in aid are held up in the U.S. Congress.
“We need to, now more than ever, show proof that we are serious, that we are not flagging in our support for Ukraine,” she said.
“Strong action on the economic front, as well as the military front, is very timely right now, and the work on the assets of the Russian central bank would represent that, and would show that we quite literally have the assets to endure.”
