Why Macron won’t send troops to Ukraine

French President Emmanuel Macron does enjoy a good grandstanding. Having once been keen to present himself as a possible bridge-builder with Moscow, he is now suggesting that western troops might go fight in Ukraine – secure in the knowledge that his bluff is unlikely to be called. At a press conference at the end of a summit in Paris on supporting Kyiv he said: ‘there is no consensus to officially send ground troops. That said, nothing should be ruled out.’ He wouldn’t say any more. He wanted to maintain some ‘strategic ambiguity.’

It is certainly true that manpower is a key Ukrainian constraint. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently admitted that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the war, although other informed assessments put it at 50,000 or even higher. The higher estimates seem plausible if you add the thousands who are recorded as missing but are likely dead. Ukraine has only lost about a half to a third of the number of men Moscow has, but then again Russia has around four times the total population.