France’s Plans To Deploy Troops To Ukraine Risk Sparking A Major Crisis

Putin must decide whether to reach a deal with Trump over this for escalation-management purposes or climb the escalation ladder by authorizing strikes against those troops if they deploy there.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported that France is plotting to deploy up to 2,000 soldiers, the core of which will be Latino assault troops from the Foreign Legion who are presently undergoing intensive training in Poland, to Central Ukraine in the near future. This follows Chief of Staff of the French Army Pierre Schill declaring that his country will be ready to deploy troops to Ukraine next year as part of “security guarantees”. Putin earlier warned that any foreign troops there would be legitimate targets.

Nevertheless, SVR reported in late September that “the first group of career military personnel from France and the United Kingdom has already arrived in Odessa”, yet no crisis followed. The reason might be that neither of them confirmed their forces’ presence there, perhaps for escalation-management purposes, so they and Russia aren’t (yet?) making a big deal about any potential casualties. Up to 2,000 conventional troops, however, would be impossible to hide and thus represent a major escalation.

French President Emmanuel Macron first flirted with deploying troops to Ukraine in February 2024, but nothing came of it likely due to reluctance among his NATO allies to risk World War III with Russia. One year later, new Secretary of Defense (now War) Pete Hegseth informed the bloc that the US won’t extend Article 5 security guarantees to allies’ troops in Ukraine. Since then, reports circulated that Trump might authorize US intelligence and logistics support for precisely such a post-war deployment.

These rumors followed his Anchorage Summit with Putin and preceded the US’ latest escalation against Russia by two months, the latter of which was assessed here as being driven in part by Trump believing that he can coerce Putin into the most realistic maximum concessions possible. About that, Russia is unlikely to ever cede the disputed territories under its control since the constitution prohibits that, but it’s hypothetically possible that it could accept the deployment of Western troops to Ukraine one day.

It’s unimportant if some consider this to be a political fantasy since that doesn’t detract from the argument that Trump is formulating US policy towards the Ukrainian Conflict with this scenario in mind. Whether this potentially French-led force would deploy during hostilities or only afterwards is a subject of debate, not to mention whether any such force would ever deploy there at all, but France remembers what Hegseth said in February and therefore probably wouldn’t do so unilaterally without US approval.

Accordingly, it should be assumed that Trump is aware of Schill’s declaration of intent about next year’s possible deployment to Ukraine and Macron’s potential plans to deploy assault troops even sooner but at the very least didn’t object, perhaps even encouraging this as leverage over Putin (as he might see it). If so, then Putin must decide whether to reach a deal with Trump over this for escalation-management purposes or climb the escalation ladder by authorizing strikes against those troops if they deploy there.

It was predicted here in late September after SVR’s report about French and UK troops in Odessa that “Direct Western intervention in the conflict is now arguably turning into a fait accompli, it’s just a question of how Russia will respond and whether the US will then be pulled into mission creep.” The two latest news items confirm the accuracy of that analysis, which lends credence to the overall assessment that Trump is “escalating to de-escalate” on better terms for the West and worse ones for Russia.