MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Friday slammed fresh comments by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he repeated that the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out.
In an interview with The Economist, Macron said the question of sending Western troops to Ukraine would "legitimately" arise if Russia broke through Ukrainian front lines and Kyiv made such a request.
Moscow has reacted with fury to previous suggestions the West could deploy forces to support Kyiv, casting it as evidence of Nato's direct involvement in the conflict and its hostile and aggressive stance towards Russia.
"The statement is very important and very dangerous," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. Macron "continues to constantly talk about the possibility of direct involvement on the ground in the conflict around Ukraine. This is a very dangerous trend," he added.
Several Nato countries, including the United States, were quick to push back in February when Macron first said Paris had not ruled out sending troops to Ukraine.
Peskov also said remarks by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that justified Kyiv striking targets inside Russia were "dangerous" and "escalatory".
In a visit to Kyiv on Thursday, Cameron said Ukraine "absolutely has the right to strike back at Russia" and that London did not put "caveats" on how Ukrainian forces use weapons supplied by Britain.
Kyiv has hit a number of energy sites inside Russia in recent months, using drones packed with explosives to strike oil refineries and depots hundreds of kilometres behind the front lines.
Ukraine says its hits are justified retribution for Moscow's attacks, and that they target a source of fuel and revenue for the Russian army. Peskov said the recent statements by Macron and Cameron "potentially pose a danger to European security, to the entire European security architecture".
"We see a dangerous tendency towards escalation in official statements. This is raising our concern," he added. Meanwhile, Russia's FSB security service said on Friday it had killed a man recruited by Ukraine to blow up military buildings and energy sites in Russia, state media reported.
The FSB said on Friday it had "neutralised" a man who had "planned to commit a series of terrorist acts in Russia", Russian state-run news agencies quoted an FSB statement as saying.
These, it said, included attacks "against defence ministry facilities in the Moscow region and against members of a volunteer battalion and a volunteer centre in Saint Petersburg".
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