France will not send its young people to Ukraine under a new voluntary national service, President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday. Speaking on RTL radio, he confirmed plans to reshape the national service programme and warned that Europe must not show weakness toward Russia as the war in Ukraine escalated with heavy overnight strikes.
“We really need to, right now, dispel any misleading notion that we are going to send our young people to Ukraine. That is not at all what this is about,” Macron said, adding that the purpose was to “strengthen” the nation rather than deploy young French people to the front.
