French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published Thursday it would be wrong to rule out any particular actions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying that doing so weakens the capacity to deter Russia.
In the interview with The Economist, Macron was asked if he stands by his statement earlier this year in which he said he would consider sending troops to Ukraine.
“I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out. We have undoubtedly been too hesitant by defining the limits of our action to someone who no longer has any and who is the aggressor,” Macron told the magazine.
He pointed to the example of NATO allies declaring they would not send tanks or long-range missiles to Ukraine.
“We are now all in the process of doing this, so it would be wrong to rule out the rest,” Macron said. “But above all, it would be wrong in terms of credibility and deterrence vis-à-vis the Russians to rule it out.”
Deadly Odesa strike
Ukrainian officials said a Russian missile attack injured 14 people Thursday at a postal facility in the southern city of Odesa.
The attack was the third to hit the city this week, including strikes that killed a total of eight people.
Oleh Kiper, the regional governor of Odesa, said the latest attack was another crime committed by Russia against Ukrainian civilians.
Russia has denied targeting civilians during its invasion of Ukraine but has repeatedly struck Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles during more than two years of attacks.
Russian officials reported Ukrainian drone attacks Thursday targeting several regions.
Andrei Klychkov, the governor of the Oryol region, said Russian air defenses intercepted Ukrainian drones over two districts, but that energy infrastructure was damaged and there were power outages in the area.
In Smolensk, the regional governor, Vasily Anokhin, said the Ukrainian drones tried to attack an energy facility.
Roman Staravoit, the governor in the Kursk region, said Russian forces downed a Ukrainian drone there, but that there was also damage to power lines.
Russia Thursday rejected U.S. accusations of using a banned chemical agent in Ukraine, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the allegation “baseless.”
The United States accused Russia Wednesday of breaching a global chemicals ban by deploying the choking agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops.
The State Department also accused Russia of using riot control agents "as a method of warfare" in Ukraine.
"The use of such chemicals is not an isolated incident and is probably driven by Russian forces' desire to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield," the State Department said in a statement.
Additionally, Russian forces have used grenades loaded with CS and CN tear gasses, according to the Ukrainian military. It said at least 500 Ukrainian soldiers have been treated for exposure to toxic substances, and one was killed by suffocating on tear gas.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
