Some states have ruled out sending ground troops to Ukraine – including Germany. However, Poland's Foreign Minister Sikorski has now stated that Western soldiers have long been in Ukraine.
It is an open secret that Western soldiers have been in Ukraine for a long time. At least that's what Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski thinks. “As your chancellor said, there are already some troops from major countries in Ukraine,” Sikorski said in an interview with the German news agency dpa. When asked whether it was a problem that the Chancellor spoke about the issue, he said: “In Polish we have the term 'Tajemnica Poliszynela', which describes a secret that everyone knows.”
On February 26, Scholz justified his rejection of the delivery of “Taurus” cruise missiles to Ukraine to journalists and said, among other things, that Germany would not participate in targeting with soldiers – neither from Germany nor on site.
Scholz added: “What the British and French are doing in terms of target control and support for target control cannot be done in Germany.” This was interpreted by opposition politicians, but also by individual politicians abroad, to mean that Scholz had confirmed the presence of Western soldiers in Ukraine.
No ground troops from Poland
Sikorski reiterated that Poland would not send ground troops to Ukraine, citing historical reasons for this. “Ukraine and Poland were one and the same country for 400 years. And that would provide easy propaganda fodder for the Russians. So we should be the last to do that,” he said.
However, Sikorski welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron's approach of not taking the option of sending ground troops to the war zone off the table. Russian President Vladimir Putin first annexed Crimea, then started a war in Donbass in eastern Ukraine and finally invaded Ukraine. “And we're concerned about the way we're going to address it,” Sikorski said.
Germany also remains in position
For Chancellor Olaf Scholz, sending German soldiers is still not an issue. Scholz made this clear immediately after Macron's proposal. Anyone who sends soldiers becomes a war party themselves, said the Chancellor.
