Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda on Wednesday called on Ukraine’s allies to stop “drawing red lines” in terms of what they’re willing to do to support Kyiv.
Nausėda made the comments while speaking at the Paris Defense and Strategy Forum. The remarks came as a direct response to French President Emmanuel Macron saying last month that he did not rule out Western soldiers eventually being sent into Ukraine. Macron backtracked somewhat on the position a few days later, but he has since said that the topic of Western boots on the ground shouldn’t be off-limits.
The Lithuania leader said he welcomes the debate opened by Macron regarding the deployment of troops into Ukraine.
“If we start saying, ‘No, [Russian President] Vladimir Putin will not like this or that’…we will never make a decision. And that is why I told both President [Macron] and the media yesterday that we should stop drawing red lines for ourselves,” Nausėda said, according to the Lithuanian news outlet LRT.
Photos by HATIM KAGHAT/BELGA MAG/AFP/VALERY SHARIFULIN/Getty Images
On February 26, Macron said that “nothing should be excluded” when discussing the possibility of sending soldiers into Ukraine to aid Kyiv’s military in the fighting against Russia’s forces.
“We will do anything we can to prevent Russia from winning this war,” the French leader said.
Macron’s statement elicited a strong response from world officials. Some leaders announced that they had no plans to become directly involved in the war, while others said they were considering a debate on the matter.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, issued a statement that declared such a move could lead to a direct conflict between NATO and Russia.
Speaking to the press on February 27, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Western troops becoming involved in the war would result in the “inevitability” of a direct confrontation.
The international controversy also saw NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg weigh in when he told the Associated Press that “there are no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.”
Nausėda, though, indicated he thinks the option should at least be on the table for leaders to consider.
“I welcomed the idea of sending missions to Ukrainian territory as an idea, and I still believe that we should discuss this idea,” Nausėda said, according to LRT.
“Of course, the best thing would be for all of us to agree unanimously on the need for this and to assess very well the intelligence and other information that we have,” he said.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.