Would sending troops to Ukraine push France definitively into conflict with Russia?
Responding to a question about the sending of ground troops by Western countries to Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron said Monday evening that “dynamically, nothing (should) be excluded.”
An outing which provoked the ire of the opposition, who were not very motivated by the idea of sending French soldiers to fight Putin's men.
The head of French diplomacy, Stéphane Séjourné, clarified on Tuesday before the deputies that the presence of French troops in Ukraine, to carry out mine clearance missions, in the cyber domain or in the production of weapons, would not cross, according to him, “the threshold of belligerence”.
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This formula designates “the moment from which the support provided by one or more State(s) to another in its fight against a common enemy make it one or more party(ies) to this armed conflict”, explains Julia Grignon, director scientist at IRSEM and specialist in armed conflict law and humanitarian law.
In other words, if France and its allies cross this red line in Ukraine, we will no longer be talking about military support for Ukraine but about a war with Moscow.
Where is this threshold located?
So the question is, where is this threshold located?
What actions in Ukraine would make France a party to the conflict?
“A commitment of French troops following a decision of the State (
the French volunteers currently engaged in Ukraine
do not count
) with a view to fighting Russian soldiers,” cites the lawyer for example.
France's participation in the planning or supervision of Ukrainian military operations, according to her, would constitute another red line.
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On the other hand, delivering any military equipment does not make a state a party to a conflict.
As well as sending forces to train Ukrainian troops or to carry out the missions mentioned by Stéphane Séjourné, according to Julia Grignon.
The threat of the threshold of belligerence has been raised several times since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
From the first deliveries of offensive Western weapons to Kiev in the spring of 2022, then a little later when the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, asked NATO to exclude Russian planes from Ukrainian skies to prevent bombings and finally when Westerners began to float the idea of delivering long-range missiles to the Ukrainians, giving them the possibility of striking Russian territory (a risk that the United States, the UK and France finally decided to take last summer in delivering this type of missile).
Fears which clearly illustrate the fact that - in the minds of heads of state - the threshold of belligerence remains a vague and less well-defined notion.
Emmanuel Macron has also assumed the fact of maintaining a “strategic ambiguity” on France’s involvement in the conflict with the aim of disorienting Moscow.
“It’s the return to a form of ambiguity in strategic discourse.
Vagueness in the notion of limit, which complicates the enemy's strategic calculation and inhibits the adversary's capacity for action,” reacted on X, Stéphane Audrand consultant in international risks.