Le Pen promises to block deployment of French troops to Ukraine if she wins the election

Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Rally Party, has promised to block the deployment of French troops to Ukraine if she wins the snap election. The RN leader said this in an interview with Le Télégramme.

According to her, if the National Rally Party wins the election and forms a government, President Emmanuel Macron will not be able to send French troops to Ukraine to help the country in its fight against Russian military invasion. Le Pen called it a line that her party would not allow to be crossed. 

“Jordan has no intention of picking a quarrel with him, but he has drawn some red lines. On Ukraine, the President will not be able to send troops.”

Marine Le Pen, leader of National Rally

“For the president, the title of commander-in-chief of the armed forces is an honorary title because it is the prime minister who controls financial flows,” Le Pen said in an interview with Le Télégramme.

As president, Macron is the commander-in-chief and traditionally plays a key role in his country’s international and defense policies.

Emmanuel Macron is one of the European leaders who has been most active in supporting Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The French President refused to rule out the possibility of sending troops if Russia decided to go ahead, while also ensuring that Russia could not win in Ukraine. Several other countries have since supported him on this concept.

However, Marine Le Pen told Le Télégramme newspaper that she believes that if National Rally leader Jordan Bardella becomes the next French prime minister, the president’s options will be reduced.

On Sunday, France will vote in the first of two rounds of early parliamentary elections. The latest opinion polls show that the National Rally could potentially win 36% of the vote, although it will not have the absolute majority needed to control parliament.

According to Le Pen, if the National Rally does win an absolute majority in parliament, Macron will have no choice but to appoint her 28-year-old protege, the head of her party, Jordan Bardella, as prime minister.

However, Bardella has said that without the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority in the National Assembly, he will not agree to become prime minister in a “hung” parliament.

A week ago, Jordan Bardella said that he fully supported Ukraine’s right to defense and was in favor of supplying Kyiv with ammunition but not long-range missiles. Sending French troops to Ukraine is out of the question, he said at the time.

Le Pen justified Crimea annexation

In May 2023, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen called the occupied Crimea a legitimate part of Russia, claiming that the peninsula’s residents had allegedly expressed their free will. She had justified the illegal annexation back in 2014, while it was widely condemned by the international community.

The leader of the RN faction in the French parliament claimed that the inhabitants of Crimea, who have been Russian since 2014 after an annexation and a disputed referendum, feel “much more deeply attached to Russia than to Ukraine.”

These controversial comments sparked anger more than a year after the start of the full-scale war between Ukraine and Russia. Marine Le Pen returned to the subject of Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, seen as illegal by the international community because it violated international law, during her hearing before the commission investigating foreign (Russian) interference.