Russia Declares it Considers NATO Troops in Ukraine Fair GameOliver JJ Lane 6 Jun 2024
Russia responds to Ukraine’s claim that it will soon be welcoming French troops to its borders by threatening to kill them, saying they would not be immune from military action.
The chief of Russia’s foreign service Sergei Lavrov says Russian forces consider NATO — specifically French — troops deployed to Ukraine as legitimate targets and, furthermore, that he believes the French are already there.
The war talk follows months of bellicose rhetoric by French President Emmanuel Macron, who above and beyond other NATO leaders seems determined to become directly involved in the Ukraine conflict to prevent the country being permanently occupied by Moscow and, he says, to save the rest of Europe from further Russian aggression.
Following Macron’s repeated calls for NATO to deploy directly to Ukraine, Kyiv itself last week went further on the idea, saying it had cleared the way legally for foreign soldiers to arrive on its territory. They also urged France to send soldiers — military advisors in this case — as quickly as possible.
Russia’s Lavrov intoned he saw no distinction between French troops in Ukraine being “servicemen from the French armed forces” working as instructors to Ukrainian recruits to “simply mercenaries”. In either case, he threatened, they “represent a legitimate target for our armed forces”.
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/06/06/russia-declares-it-considers-nato-troops-in-ukraine-fair-game/
