“I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out,” said French President Emmanuel Macron when asked if he stood by comments earlier this year not excluding the sending of Western troops that sent shockwaves around Europe.
Macron said “if Russia decided to go further, we will in any case all have to ask ourselves this question” of sending troops, describing his refusal to rule out such a move as a “strategic wake-up call for my counterparts”.
He described Russia as “a power of regional destabilisation” and “a threat to Europeans’ security”.
Macron was the leader that was being mocked for trying to keep talking to Putin and trying to find a way to talk through the crisis.
This reversal in posture I think is extremely telling of how far gone the Russian leadership is… When even your best interlocutor turns away, even more when they turn hardliner against you, that means they have seen something that has deeply deeply shaken them.