Ukraine’s in a dire position. Macron’s gaffe made things worse.

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. 

French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that NATO might have to send troops to Ukraine was met with brickbats and catcalls this week.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz led the pack of infuriated hecklers taking issue with Macron’s claim that NATO has ruled nothing out when it comes to dispatching troops. Scholz explicitly stated Western governments had agreed “there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil who are sent there from European states or NATO states.” His deputy Robert Habeck, meanwhile, sniffed that France should focus on stepping up its weapon deliveries to Ukraine instead.

According to French officials, Macron’s comments were meant to galvanize Western powers and ignite debate over what’s needed to prevent a Russian victory. According to an Elysée aide, they were also meant “to send a strong strategic message to the Russians to say: ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’” (Apparently said without a hint of irony.)

But if the French leader’s remarks were meant to send a firm warning to the Kremlin, they failed spectacularly — in fact, they achieved the complete opposite. To the Kremlin’s chortling delight, Macron’s comments exposed Western splits and rifts, communicating panic over the military state of play in Ukraine.

And Russian officials rushed forward to ridicule Macron. Former President and current Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev mocked him for “verbal incontinence,” while Chairmen of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said the French leader’s “loud statements” had “horrified the residents of his country and the leaders of a number of European states.” It sure did.

It also handed Russian President Vladimir Putin a great propaganda opportunity to reinforce the time-worn narrative for his groomed domestic audience that the West — nowadays represented by NATO — wants to destroy Russia. Volodin couldn’t resist comparing Macron to Napoleon Bonaparte, warning him how it ended for the French emperor “and his soldiers, more than 600,000 of whom were left lying in the damp earth,” he said.

Of course, Macron has practice in offering monumental statements he subsequently reverses, unembarrassed by any contradiction or hitch. Or, they’re simply set aside and forgotten as he floats some other grande idée. But raising the possibility of dispatching NATO troops stands out as a glaring misreading of not only his counterparts, but also of a European public that’s growing increasingly uneasy about where this war is going — and whether Ukraine can win.

Commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a major survey of 12 EU countries, which was published last week points to a marked change in public sentiment. With the underwhelming counteroffensive and the prospect of former U.S. President Donald Trump returning to the White House fueling a burgeoning pessimism, only 10 percent of those surveyed said they believe Ukraine can defeat Russia, while 20 percent predicted a Russian win.

Moreover, when tallied together, just 31 percent of respondents said they favored Europe backing Ukraine until it regained occupied territory, whereas 41 percent favored Europe pushing Ukraine toward negotiating a peace deal with Russia. Notably, “people’s solidarity appears to be wavering in some of the country’s next-door neighbors,” the ECFR’s Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard wrote.

“Our poll shows that European citizens are not in an especially heroic mood. In the wake of a U.S. withdrawal, only a minority of Europeans (just 20 per cent on average, ranging from 7 per cent in Greece to 43 per cent in Sweden) would want Europe to increase its support for Ukraine,” they added.

This all seems to have passed Macron by. It will take the collective powers of persuasion of all European leaders just to keep their people on side to maintain support as it is — persuading them that NATO boots are needed on the ground will only risk more wavering, especially with Putin threatening nuclear escalation, as he did Thursday.

And this all leaves Ukraine in a dire position. Short on manpower and ammunition, it will be in no position to mount a serious counterattack this year. All it can do is hang on, hoping to build up for a serious counteroffensive next year. But, as a POLITICO analysis points out, “without Western air defense and long-range missiles as well as artillery shells, Kyiv will struggle to mount a credible, sustained defense.”

So, rather than chaneling the interventionists of the past, Macron would be better employed arguing for Europe to step up military supplies to ensure Putin is deprived of a win and Ukraine is given what it needs. Besides, the West has a lousy track record when it comes to recent boots-on-the-ground interventions.

Not that historical interventions turned out that well either, as historian Anna Reid’s recently published book on the chaotic and ill-defined Western intervention in the Russian civil war reminds us.

However, in her book “A Nasty Little War,” Reid rightly argues there’s “no simple read-across” from that intervention. “The lazy lesson from 1918-20 — that Western meddling in the region failed then, and will again now — is completely mistaken.” For one, the circumstances are different — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t a civil war, and “the staunchly democratic Ukrainians are not the inept, revanchist Whites.”

But according to Reid, Putin will fail because “he underestimates the desire for freedom” and “because for his own people, he has no program beyond the empty assertion of Russia’s greatness and right to rule.”

Let’s hope that proves true. However, while Ukraine’s “resolve seems set to stay strong,” it won’t be enough if the country doesn’t receive the weapons it needs. And that’s what Macron should be focused on — not dividing Kyiv’s allies, advertising splits and giving the Kremlin a propaganda gift.

Give Ukraine the tools, so it can have a fighting chance to finish the job.