Poland confirms:

Poland: Western soldiers are in Ukraine

Recruits of the "Assault Brigade" near Kiev(Bild: AP)

The Polish Foreign Minister has described the presence of Western soldiers in Ukraine as an open secret: "As your Chancellor said, there are already some troops from large countries in Ukraine," said Radoslaw Sikorski in an interview with the German Press Agency. "In Polish we have the term Tajemenica Polizynela, which describes a secret that everyone knows."

He reiterated that Poland would not send ground troops to Ukraine, citing historical reasons. "Ukraine and Poland were one and the same country for 400 years. And that would provide the Russians with too easy propaganda fodder. So we should be the last to do that."

Backing for Macron
However, Sikorski welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron's approach of not taking the option of deploying ground troops to the war zone off the table. Russian President Vladimir Putin had first annexed Crimea, then started a war in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass and finally invaded Ukraine.

"Let Putin worry about what we are going to do"
"I can understand President Macron's strategic, or in this case tactical, logic of reversing the narrative. Let Putin worry about what we are going to do." German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had categorically ruled out the deployment of ground troops.

Recruits of the Ukrainian 3rd assault brigade near Kiev(Bild: AP)

At the end of February, Scholz had justified his no to the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and said, among other things, that Germany would not participate with soldiers in target control - neither from Germany nor on the ground. He added: "What the British and French are doing in terms of target control and accompanying target control cannot be done in Germany."