The highly sensitive discussions between Paris and Kyiv on the possibility of dispatching French military instructors to Ukraine, which began several months ago, gave rise to several contradictory statements from the highest echelons of the Ukrainian military hierarchy on Monday, May 27, as well as a skilfully maintained ambiguity on the French side.
A remote meeting between French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu and his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov had been announced by Paris on Monday morning. Following the meeting, the Ukrainian army's chief of general staff, General Oleksandr Syrsky, was positive. "I am pleased to welcome France's initiative to send instructors to Ukraine to train Ukrainian servicemen. I have already signed the documents that will enable the first French instructors to visit our training centers shortly and familiarize themselves with their infrastructure and personnel," he asserted on Telegram, after taking part in the discussion with Umerov and Lecornu. Neither the French Armed Forces Ministry nor the military's general staff have subsequently denied this statement.
On Monday, Lecornu's office merely reiterated the official French position on this sensitive issue, which had been put on the table by French President Emmanuel Macron at the end of February, during an international conference on support for Kyiv. At the time, Macron stated that "sending troops" to Ukraine should not be "ruled out." "As already mentioned several times, training on Ukrainian soil has been one of the projects discussed since the conference on support for Ukraine (...) on February 26. This matter is still being worked on with the Ukrainians," said the French Armed Forces Ministry on Monday.
However, the ambiguity intensified later that evening when the Ukrainian Defense Ministry issued a "clarification" on the social media platform X. "Starting from February 2024, Ukraine expressed interest in the prospect of receiving foreign instructors in Ukraine," it said, adding that "as of now, we are still in discussions with France and other countries on this issue."
It added more new details: "The Ministry of Defense, together with the General Staff, started internal work on the relevant documents on this issue in order not to waste time on coordinating bureaucratic issues when the appropriate decision will be made." Moscow had not yet reacted to these remarks on Monday evening, but Russian news sites placed the story on their front pages.
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