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Western Troop Presence in Ukraine ‘Open Secret,’ Poland’s Top Diplomat Says
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Western Troop Presence in Ukraine ‘Open Secret,’ Poland’s Top Diplomat Says
The presence of Western troops in Ukraine is an “open secret,” Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, said in recent remarks to the German press.
“As [German Chancellor Olaf Scholz] has said, there are already some troops from big [Western] countries in Ukraine,” he told the German Press Agency on March 20.
“In Polish, we have an expression—‘tajemnica poliszynela’—which describes a secret that everyone knows,” Mr. Sikorski added.
Last month, the German chancellor defended his reluctance to provide Ukraine with long-range Taurus missile systems, which, he said, had to be operated by trained German personnel.
“German soldiers must at no point … be linked to targets that this [Taurus] system reaches,” Mr. Scholz, who has ruled out sending German troops to Ukraine, said on Feb. 26.
The German leader has thus far sought to avoid bringing his country into direct confrontation with Russia, citing fears of a wider conflict.
“What is being done in the way of target control … on the part of the British and French can’t be done in Germany,” Mr. Scholz added.
His remarks were widely interpreted as a tacit admission that military personnel from the United Kingdom and France were already on the ground in Ukraine.
London and Paris have provided Kyiv with their own long-range missile systems—the Storm Shadow and SCALP systems, respectively—both of which require trained operators.
The German leader’s remarks—and their implications—drew angry responses from UK officials.
Quoted by Politico on Feb. 29, Alicia Kearns, head of the British Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, described Mr. Scholz’s apparent admission as “irresponsible and a slap in the face to [Germany’s] allies.”
A UK Defense Ministry spokesperson said: “Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow and its targeting processes are the business of the armed forces of Ukraine.”
The response from Paris, however, was noticeably more muted.
Indeed, French President Emmanuel Macron has made no secret of his willingness to at least consider the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.
Last month, he surprised many observers when he suggested that EU member-states could deploy troops to help fight Russia’s two-year-old invasion.
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