Strategy for assisting Kyiv goes to symbolic vote the French president hopes will force Le Pen’s party to clarify stance

Emmanuel Macron’s allies have likened the French president to Winston Churchill in the face of Hitler for his plan to put boots on the ground in Ukraine.

However, the opposition accused the Mr Macron of cynically exploiting the Ukraine conflict for “short-term” electoral gain.

The comparison with Britain’s wartime leader came as Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, assured France that “your children are not going to die in Ukraine” as long as his country “holds out”.

Mr Macron’s controversial comments that “nothing should be ruled out” when it came to dispatching Western ground troops to Ukraine “did not mean that the French army was going to intervene in Ukraine; we are only talking about training in various areas,” Mr Zelensky told BFMTV and Le Monde.

“As long as Ukraine holds out, the French army can stay on French territory,” he said, adding that if Russia attacked a Nato country that would be another matter.

The interview came just hours before Mr Macron’s Ukraine strategy was put to a symbolic vote in parliament’s lower house as political tensions mounted in the run-up to June’s European Parliament elections.

The non-binding National Assembly vote was for or against a bilateral security agreement signed by Mr Macron and Mr Zelensky last month.

The ten-year deal includes a strengthening of military cooperation, particularly in the fields of artillery and air defence and a pledge of “up to three billion euros in additional support” in 2024, on top of the €1.7bn in 2022 and €2.4bn in 2023. It reiterates French support in Ukraine’s bid to join the EU and Nato.

Kicking off Tuesday’s parliamentary debate, French MPs offered a standing ovation as Gabriel Attal, the French prime minister, paid “tribute to the exceptional resistance of the Ukrainian people”.

With the conflict with Russia at a “tipping point,” he warned of the “concrete” and “tangible” risks of a Russian victory on the “daily lives” of the French people.

He insisted that to vote against the French aid plan would be to “turn your back on our history. To abstain is to flee”.

Mr Macron let it be known that the debate would help “clarify” the stance of each party, notably Marine Le Pen’s hard-Right National Rally (RN), which his camp accuses of appeasing Vladimir Putin, the Russian president and for being “soft” on helping Ukraine, which is running out of ammunition.

Speaking before the debate, François Patriat, the Senate leader of Mr Macron’s Renaissance group, said: “Macron’s position is Churchillian.”

“Churchill did not sign the Munich Agreement in 1938 allowing Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the agreement for the UK as Churchill only took over in May 1940.

“[Churchill] was isolated, like Macron today. We must not give in to Putin the way we gave in to Hitler,” he said.

‘A short-term electoral agenda’

But in the debate, Ms Le Pen said Mr Macron’s aims were anything but lofty.

“Either we’re pro-Macron, or we’re accused of being pro-Putin,” she told MPs.. “You have... hijacked, exploited and instrumentalised a major international crisis to put it at the service of a short-term electoral agenda”, said the RN figure whose party was expected to abstain.

Earlier her protègé Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s 28-year-old leader, said RN could not vote in favour because of “red lines”, in particular Ukraine’s potential membership of the European Union and Nato.

He also denounced the “principle of active deterrence” mentioned in the Feb 16 deal. “We need to be very careful,” said Mr Bardella, “yes to support for Ukraine but no to a war with Russia”, which he pointed out is “a nuclear power”.

The hard-Left France Unbowed party said it would vote against the agreement because “we are opposed to France being the leader of the war camp”, said Manuel Bompard, an MP. Fabien Roussel, the Communist leader, described the idea of Ukraine joining Nato as a “provocation”.

But the Socialists said they would vote for it. “Do you really think that Nato is an aggressor against Russia? The pacifists are in the West, but the missiles are in the East,” said leader Olivier Faure.

“This vote is a blank cheque for the President of the Republic, his warmongering rhetoric and his logic of escalation,” warned Cyrielle Chatelain, a Green MP, who nevertheless said her party would support the motion to show support for Ukraine.

The Right-wing Republicans (LR) were also due to vote for the agreement but slammed Mr Macron for shamelessly seeking to exploit the war for domestic ends ahead of European elections, which his party is polling to lose to RN.

The latest Ipsos survey on Monday saw Marine Le Pen’s camp winning by a margin of 13 points.

‘Abstention is a form of ambiguity’

“As soon as an election approaches, Emmanuel Macron puts on his war leader sweatshirt,” quipped Olivier Marleix, the leader of the LR group in the National Assembly.

“Exploiting the conflict in Ukraine for the French European elections is shameful, unworthy and pitiful!,” said Eric Ciotti, the LR leader.

However, he added: “Abstention is a form of ambiguity. We can clearly see that the RN is embarrassed by this debate. We must stand by the Ukrainians.”

His colleague Jean-Louis Thiériot, a military expert, said that while expressed in a “clumsy” manner, Mr Macron’s instincts were correct as they countered “the spirit of defeat”.

“We are living in times when the divide is less between Left and Right than between those who are ready to submit and those who refuse to surrender.”

Meanwhile, Socialist MEP Raphael Glucksman, who is polling to win 11.5 per cent of the vote in European elections, called on Mr Macron to “stop the literary debates about sending troops to Ukraine” and “drastically increase our arms production and delivery capacities”.

In his interview with French media, Mr Zelensky insisted ground troops were not an issue.

“What [Mr Macron] wants is for Ukraine not to find itself alone against one or two partners, he wants a coalition around Ukraine... It’s no secret that there have been training missions in artillery, armour, defence systems, F-16s and fighter aircraft training.

“But Emmanuel [Macron] knows very well that when we send our troops for training, when they come back they also have to adapt to the Ukrainian terrain and continue their training there.

“This process takes twice as long, from the time you send someone for training to their operational capacity on the battlefield. The proposal to reduce this training time and to conduct it entirely in Ukraine, adapting it directly to the state of war, is a good thing.”