Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told the Financial Times that she supports French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks on NATO deploying troops in Ukraine, stating that NATO should not rule out the possibility. “Now’s not the time to send boots on the ground and we are not even willing to discuss it at this stage. But for the long term, of course we shouldn’t be ruling anything out,” she said.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė also agrees with Macron’s remarks, telling the Times, “What I liked about two recent announcements of President Macron is that he said that actually why should we impose ourselves red lines when Putin basically has no red lines?”
Last week Valtonen met with her Swedish counterpart, Minister for Foreign Affairs Tobias Billström. Sweden and Finland, the two newest members of NATO, discussed supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, with Billström posting on X, “Sweden 🇸🇪 and Finland 🇫🇮 are the best of friends. Now we are also both allies in @NATO and I visited my colleague and friend @elinavaltonen at @Hanaholmen for good talks and open seminar on security cooperation and aid to Ukraine 🇺🇦. We stand together on all these issues. Kiitos paljon!”
Yesterday Billström said he agreed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that the war with Russia is “a war of global significance,” stating on X, “Could not agree more with 🇺🇦President @ZelenskyyUa in his [assessment] of why this war matters to us all.”
