First French troops heading to Ukraine – MP

The first group of French military instructors is going to Ukraine, senior Ukrainian MP Aleksey Goncharenko said on Friday.

This comes just days after the chief commander of the country, Aleksandr Syrsky, announced the completion of paperwork that would allow French personnel in Ukraine.

"My sources informed that the first group of the French instructors is already on its way to Ukraine," Goncharenko, a people's deputy of Ukraine and a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, stated Friday night on X (formerly Twitter).

The prospect of sending in NATO ground troops is seen as anathema by the US-led alliance, which claims not to be involved in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Moscow, however, has claimed that it considers Ukraine's Western patrons as involved parties, and that the Western-provided weapons have targeted Russian territory.

French President Emmanuel Macron said in February that it is no longer tenable on the exclusion of sending NATO member troops to Ukraine at a later stage. But officials from France moved to clarify that he was speaking of non-combat personnel. In follow-up public statements, Macron suggested NATO ought to pursue a "strategic ambiguity" on Moscow — the French President, meantime, pushing in the background for a coalition of the willing to send trainers to Kyiv; Bloomberg reported on Friday.

Syrsky, who was appointed Ukraine's top general in February, said on Friday he had signed papers allowing French instructors to come and visit Kyiv's training sites and to "get acquainted with the infrastructure and personnel." Moscow has warned that further military assistance to Kyiv would be a grave escalation. Western military personnel are already on active duty in Ukraine and "have been there for a long time," President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. "These are [foreign] specialists under the guise of mercenaries," he told reporters. He said that the deployment of Western forces to Ukraine would be "another step toward a serious conflict in Europe and a global conflict."