No official position has been taken and there is considerable discretion from the French president's office and resigning ministers. While the UK is at the forefront of efforts to convince the US to allow Ukraine to strike military sites in Russia, France is cultivating ambiguity on the issue. On Friday, September 13, when Joe Biden refused to accede to this request, the French authorities – very much in the background in this discussion against a backdrop of political turbulence in Paris – refrained from making the slightest comment.

So far, the French side is sticking to statements made by Emmanuel Macron in Meseberg near Berlin on May 28, alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, for his part, is still opposed to delivering the long-range Taurus missiles. "We think we should allow them to neutralize the military sites from which the missiles are fired, and basically the military sites from which Ukraine is being attacked, but we must not allow them to hit other targets in Russia, civilian capabilities naturally, or other military targets," said the French president that day, following his state visit to Germany. Russia then began bombing the Kharkiv region from within its own territory. "We're not escalating by doing this, since it's Russia that's organizing itself in this way," stated the French president, without setting any geographical limit to possible deep strikes using French weapons.

No doubt the subject came up during the last phone call between Volodymyr Zelensky and Macron on Thursday, September 5, although the French president's office does not plan to confirm this. Secretary of the Ukrainian security and defense council Oleksandr Lytvynenko was in Paris the following day to raise the subject with his French counterparts, among other matters.

The concern, however, is avoiding a new escalation with Moscow, which is stepping up its threats. Such a decision "would mean that NATO countries, the US and European countries are at war with Russia," Vladimir Putin claimed on Thursday. "Everything must be done to avoid a third world war," said a French diplomatic source. "You can't just dismiss the possibility of the Russians expanding the scope of the war."

The Ukrainians are counting on these long-range missiles to disrupt Russian logistics at the rear of the front line. This is what they did in the summer of 2022 when they deployed the first American HIMARS rocket launchers, whose range enabled them to reach the Russians' rear base. "Logistics centers, maintenance sites and troops were then positioned 50 kilometers to the rear. Today, the idea is the same, but the aim is to go further," said Vincent Tourret, a doctoral student at the Université du Québec à Montréal and an associate researcher at the Fondation pour la Recherche stratégique (Foundation for Strategic Research). To achieve this, the Ukrainians are seeking to make their strikes more complex, by combining different types of weapons: ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones.

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