Emmanuel Macron’s allies have likened the French president to Winston Churchill in the face of Hitler for his plan to put boots on the ground in Ukraine.

Mr Macron’s Ukraine strategy is to be put to a symbolic vote in parliament’s lower house on Tuesday amid growing tensions on the suggestion that Western troops could be deployed to the battlefield.

Mr Macron has already let it be known that the debate would help to “clarify” the stance of each party, notably Marine Le Pen’s hard-Right National Rally (RN), which his camp accuses of appeasing Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Speaking before the debate, François Patriat, the Senate leader of Mr Macron’s Renaissance group, said: “Macron’s position is Churchillian.”

He said that “Churchill did not sign the Munich Agreement in 1938” allowing Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia, referring to the agreement signed by Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister at the time. Churchill took over the premiership in May 1940.

“[Churchill] was isolated, like Macron today. We must not give in to Putin the way we gave in to Hitler,” Mr Patriat said.

Western allies including Britain have largely rebuffed Mr Macron’s proposals for Western troops to be deployed to Ukraine, leaving him isolated on the international stage.

On Tuesday, the National Assembly lower house will hold a non-binding vote on the French government’s Ukraine strategy, including a bilateral security agreement signed last month by Mr Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president.

The 10-year deal includes a strengthening of military cooperation, particularly in the fields of artillery and air defence, plus a pledge of “up to €3 billion in additional support” in 2024 on top of the €1.7 billion in 2022 and €2.4 billion last year. It reiterates French support in Ukraine’s bid to join the EU and Nato.

While the vote will be symbolic, it will give political parties an opportunity to publicly explain their positions on Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s 28-year-old leader announced that his party would “abstain” during the vote because of “red lines”, in particular Ukraine’s potential membership of the European Union and Nato.

He also denounced the “principle of active deterrence” mentioned in the Feb 16 deal. ”We need to be very careful,” said Mr Bardella, “yes to support for Ukraine but no to a war with Russia” – which he pointed out is “a nuclear power”.

The hard-Left France Unbowed party intends to vote against the agreement because “we are opposed to France being the leader of the war camp”, said Manuel Bompard, an MP for the Left-wing party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed).

The Communist leader Fabien Roussel described the idea of Ukraine joining Nato as a “provocation”, but the Socialists said that they would vote for it.

”Do you really think that Nato is an aggressor against Russia? The pacifists are in the West, but the missiles are in the East,” said the Socialist leader Olivier Faure.

The Right-wing Republicans (LR) are likely to vote for the agreement but slammed Mr Macron for shamelessly seeking to exploit the war for domestic ends ahead of European elections that his party is predicted to lose to RN.

The latest Ipsos survey on Monday saw Ms Le Pen’s camp winning by a margin of 13 points.

“As soon as an election approaches, Emmanuel Macron puts on his war leader sweatshirt,” said Olivier Marleix, the leader of the LR group in the National Assembly.

“Exploiting the conflict in Ukraine for the French European elections is shameful, unworthy and pitiful,” said Eric Ciotti, the LR leader.

But he added: “Abstention is a form of ambiguity. We can clearly see that the RN is embarrassed by this debate. We must stand by the Ukrainians.”

‘Nothing should be ruled out’

His colleague Jean-Louis Thiériot, a military expert and an MP, said that while expressed in a “clumsy” manner, Mr Macron’s instincts were correct because they countered “the spirit of defeat”.

He added: “We are living in times when the divide is less between Left and Right than between those who are ready to submit and those who refuse to surrender”.

Also on Tuesday, Mr Zelensky assured France that “your children are not going to die in Ukraine” as long as his country “holds out”.

Mr Macron’s controversial comments that “nothing should be ruled out” when it came to dispatching Western ground troops to Ukraine “did not mean that the French army was going to intervene in Ukraine; we are only talking about training in various areas”, Mr Zelensky told BFM TV and Le Monde.

“As long as Ukraine holds out, the French army can stay on French territory,” he said, adding that if Russia attacked a Nato country, that would be another matter.