Fico leaks that NATO countries are weighing sending troops to Ukraine
Robert Fico reveals that several NATO and EU countries are exploring sending troops to Ukraine bilaterally, while Macron admits there is no consensus
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Slovakia reveals that NATO and EU countries are weighing sending troops
NATO is not going to send troops to Ukraine. NATO is not part of the conflict. Both phrases have been repeated for two years, and they are also what cracks when someone reads closely what the Slovak prime minister let slip on February 26, 2024, before sitting down at the Élysée. Robert Fico revealed that several NATO and European Union member states are considering sending soldiers to Ukraine on a bilateral basis. The nuance is not cosmetic: it is the boundary between an alliance and a sum of private agreements.
The meeting was called by Emmanuel Macron with about twenty European leaders. At the end, the French president admitted that today there is no consensus to deploy troops. Hours earlier, Fico had already spilled the beans.
What Fico said and why the word bilateral changes everything
According to the account picked up by Reuters, Fico said the talking points prepared for the Paris meeting «imply that several NATO and EU member states are considering sending their troops to Ukraine bilaterally». He added that he could not say for what purpose or what they should do there. Slovakia, a member of both organizations, would not send soldiers, weapons, or ammunition.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala pushed back: the Czech Republic «certainly is not preparing to send any soldiers». Fico said the meeting material gave him «chills down his spine», that he saw a risk of major escalation, and that those who talk do so of war, never of peace.
The key is the formula. A deployment under the NATO flag would drag in the entire alliance. A bilateral deployment—country to country, with Ukraine as a partner—avoids that umbrella. And without the umbrella, Article 5 is out of the equation: if Russia strikes foreign soldiers on Ukrainian soil, there is no casus foederis to invoke. That is the legal hole on which the whole discussion rests.
Paris, February 26: who put the brakes on Macron
At the Élysée there was no photo of unity. Later accounts place Olaf Scholz, Pedro Sánchez, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Fico himself forming a common front to halt the debate on sending troops, against Macron's position. Socialists, conservatives and the Orbán orbit, together, each for their own reasons.
Macron kept insisting that his comments responded to «a necessary awakening». Shortly before, Giorgia Meloni had signed a bilateral security agreement with Volodímir Zelenski, the same formula already held by Germany, Canada, Denmark, France and Italy. It is worth not confusing the catalogue: these are security and cooperation agreements, not deployment orders. Nothing in them obliges boots on the ground.
Germany rules out Taurus and drops off the candidate list
Scholz was blunt about long-range weapons: delivering Taurus missiles, capable of reaching the Crimean bridge, is «out of the question». His argument is that doing so would risk Germany entering the war. Berlin thus detaches itself from any scenario of direct involvement.
The consequence is an awkward geometry. If bilateral treaties are signed but the big signatories do not want to send anything, the weight ends up falling on the eastern countries. And that is where Estonia comes in.
Estonia rules nothing out and Russia is already marking targets
Kaja Kallas, Estonia's prime minister, refused to guarantee that her country's defense forces would not be deployed in Ukraine. She refused, she argued, because circumstances can change. It is the first official response that does not close the door.
On the other side, Russian sources have spoken of 2,000 French soldiers bound for Ukraine and have marked them as priority targets. The French Ministry of the Armed Forces called that information an example of «mass disinformation» and asked for maximum vigilance. The person who put the figures on the table was the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. That is as far as the account goes: an unconfirmed figure on one side, a denial on the other.
500,000 soldiers and an industry that cannot arrive in time
The debate runs into a practical problem that no summit can solve. According to the calculation circulating in the forum, to hold a 1,000-kilometer front Ukraine would need on the order of 500,000 soldiers, and its pool of recruits is running out. No European country has that number to give away.
Comparative capabilities are not encouraging either. Against the calculation circulating about Russian production—put at 1,500 tanks a year and 100,000 kamikaze drones—Italy has ordered 125 Leopard 2A8s, the bulk of which will not arrive until 2035. Spain's DRAGON program is five or six years behind, and the S80 submarine has fared no better. The timelines turn any escalation scenario into a bet on a decade.
Who pays for the party and with what money
There is a third front, less televised. Sustaining this standoff has a price, and ordinary budgets do not cover it. In France there has already been talk of mobilizing citizens' savings to finance the effort, and the European bond market appears as the mechanism that would end up absorbing the bill. The summary circulating is simple: the east provides the soldiers and the west provides the money.
The leak does not say there will be European troops in Ukraine this year. It says the matter is being discussed, and that the discussion is taking place outside NATO so as not to trigger commitments no one wants to trigger. If the plan advances, it will be with volunteers from the east and logistics from the west, with Article 5 in their pocket and untouched. And if something goes wrong, the bill falls to a small country that signed a piece of paper that promised it nothing.
Voices from the forum
«The only circumstance in which NATO could consider intervening in the conflict would be if all intelligence agencies reach a consensus on the existence of a structural weakness in Russia's defense that makes it impossible for it to face the full power of the West.»
«GDP is indicative of nothing if you have neither industry nor raw materials. One example: Russia is currently producing 1,500 tanks a year and 100,000 kamikaze drones.»
«Spain garrisoned Italy and the Italians went to Flanders. After a few years, I think three, the Spaniards went to Flanders and a new Spanish garrison arrived.»
NATO is not going to send troops to Ukraine. NATO is not part of the conflict. Both phrases have been repeated for two years, and they are also what cracks when someone reads closely what the Slovak prime minister let slip on February 26, 2024, before sitting down at the Élysée. Robert Fico revealed that several NATO and European Union member states are considering sending soldiers to Ukraine on a bilateral basis. The nuance is not cosmetic: it is the boundary between an alliance and a sum of private agreements.
The meeting was called by Emmanuel Macron with about twenty European leaders. At the end, the French president admitted that today there is no consensus to deploy troops. Hours earlier, Fico had already spilled the beans.
What Fico said and why the word bilateral changes everything
According to the account picked up by Reuters, Fico said the talking points prepared for the Paris meeting «imply that several NATO and EU member states are considering sending their troops to Ukraine bilaterally». He added that he could not say for what purpose or what they should do there. Slovakia, a member of both organizations, would not send soldiers, weapons, or ammunition.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala pushed back: the Czech Republic «certainly is not preparing to send any soldiers». Fico said the meeting material gave him «chills down his spine», that he saw a risk of major escalation, and that those who talk do so of war, never of peace.
The key is the formula. A deployment under the NATO flag would drag in the entire alliance. A bilateral deployment—country to country, with Ukraine as a partner—avoids that umbrella. And without the umbrella, Article 5 is out of the equation: if Russia strikes foreign soldiers on Ukrainian soil, there is no casus foederis to invoke. That is the legal hole on which the whole discussion rests.
Paris, February 26: who put the brakes on Macron
At the Élysée there was no photo of unity. Later accounts place Olaf Scholz, Pedro Sánchez, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Fico himself forming a common front to halt the debate on sending troops, against Macron's position. Socialists, conservatives and the Orbán orbit, together, each for their own reasons.
Macron kept insisting that his comments responded to «a necessary awakening». Shortly before, Giorgia Meloni had signed a bilateral security agreement with Volodímir Zelenski, the same formula already held by Germany, Canada, Denmark, France and Italy. It is worth not confusing the catalogue: these are security and cooperation agreements, not deployment orders. Nothing in them obliges boots on the ground.
Germany rules out Taurus and drops off the candidate list
Scholz was blunt about long-range weapons: delivering Taurus missiles, capable of reaching the Crimean bridge, is «out of the question». His argument is that doing so would risk Germany entering the war. Berlin thus detaches itself from any scenario of direct involvement.
The consequence is an awkward geometry. If bilateral treaties are signed but the big signatories do not want to send anything, the weight ends up falling on the eastern countries. And that is where Estonia comes in.
Estonia rules nothing out and Russia is already marking targets
Kaja Kallas, Estonia's prime minister, refused to guarantee that her country's defense forces would not be deployed in Ukraine. She refused, she argued, because circumstances can change. It is the first official response that does not close the door.
On the other side, Russian sources have spoken of 2,000 French soldiers bound for Ukraine and have marked them as priority targets. The French Ministry of the Armed Forces called that information an example of «mass disinformation» and asked for maximum vigilance. The person who put the figures on the table was the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. That is as far as the account goes: an unconfirmed figure on one side, a denial on the other.
500,000 soldiers and an industry that cannot arrive in time
The debate runs into a practical problem that no summit can solve. According to the calculation circulating in the forum, to hold a 1,000-kilometer front Ukraine would need on the order of 500,000 soldiers, and its pool of recruits is running out. No European country has that number to give away.
Comparative capabilities are not encouraging either. Against the calculation circulating about Russian production—put at 1,500 tanks a year and 100,000 kamikaze drones—Italy has ordered 125 Leopard 2A8s, the bulk of which will not arrive until 2035. Spain's DRAGON program is five or six years behind, and the S80 submarine has fared no better. The timelines turn any escalation scenario into a bet on a decade.
Who pays for the party and with what money
There is a third front, less televised. Sustaining this standoff has a price, and ordinary budgets do not cover it. In France there has already been talk of mobilizing citizens' savings to finance the effort, and the European bond market appears as the mechanism that would end up absorbing the bill. The summary circulating is simple: the east provides the soldiers and the west provides the money.
The leak does not say there will be European troops in Ukraine this year. It says the matter is being discussed, and that the discussion is taking place outside NATO so as not to trigger commitments no one wants to trigger. If the plan advances, it will be with volunteers from the east and logistics from the west, with Article 5 in their pocket and untouched. And if something goes wrong, the bill falls to a small country that signed a piece of paper that promised it nothing.
Voices from the forum
«The only circumstance in which NATO could consider intervening in the conflict would be if all intelligence agencies reach a consensus on the existence of a structural weakness in Russia's defense that makes it impossible for it to face the full power of the West.»
«GDP is indicative of nothing if you have neither industry nor raw materials. One example: Russia is currently producing 1,500 tanks a year and 100,000 kamikaze drones.»
«Spain garrisoned Italy and the Italians went to Flanders. After a few years, I think three, the Spaniards went to Flanders and a new Spanish garrison arrived.»
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (475 replies).
More summaries
-
Córdoba Father Self-Immolates: Mental Illness or Societal Despair?
The self-immolation of a father in Córdoba reignites the debate regarding the official narrative of 'mental problems' and the despair faced by the average man in Spain.
-
Euthanasia in Old Age: Autonomy vs. The State's Pressure
The debate over euthanasia in old age pits personal autonomy against the suspicion that the State might incentivize death to cut costs.
-
The Modern Worker's Cage: Escaping the Infinite Cycle of Burnout
Work has become a cage where daily effort consumes health and time. Discover why we push ourselves so hard and how to break the cycle.
-
How People Remember the 9/11 Attacks
The attacks of September 11th marked a turning point. Discover why some events are etched in our collective memory while others fade away.
-
Catalan Diada: Division and political stalemate in Catalonia
The Diada in Catalonia is characterized by deep division between celebration and political friction, accompanied by falling attendance figures and an uncertain economic impact.
-
Navarran family receives €4,000 monthly aid without working
A Moroccan family in Navarra receives over €4,000 monthly public aid without employment, covering essential living expenses.