The Kremlin warned today that conflict between Russia and NATO would be inevitable if European members sent troops to fight in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned yesterday that European countries have not ruled out putting boots on the ground.

He said nothing should be ruled out as the West looks for a strategy to counter Russia, which controls just under a fifth of the territory recognized as Ukraine.

“We will do everything we have to do so that Russia does not win,” Macron said.

“The fact that there is talk of the possibility of sending certain contingents from NATO countries to Ukraine is a very important new element,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about Macron’s comments.

Asked about the risks if NATO members sent their troops to fight in Ukraine, Peskov said: “In that case we should not talk about the probability, but about the inevitability (of a direct conflict).”

Peskov said the West must ask itself whether such a scenario is in the interests of their countries and peoples.

The war in Ukraine has created the worst crisis in Russia’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and President Vladimir Putin has previously warned of the dangers of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

Even talk of a confrontation between Russia and NATO – a Cold War nightmare for leaders and populations alike – points to the dangers of escalation as the West grapples with a resurgent Russia, 32 years after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz today rejected the idea of ​​European countries and NATO sending troops to Ukraine, after Macron said the idea could not be ruled out.

“What has been agreed among ourselves and with each other from the beginning also applies to the future, namely that no soldiers will be sent onto Ukrainian territory by European states or NATO states,” Scholz said.

“Britain already has a small number of personnel in the country supporting Ukraine’s armed forces, including for medical training,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said today.

“We have no plans for a large-scale deployment,” he said, adding: “The UK is also training large numbers of Ukrainian personnel here in Britain. Of course, we also support the Ukrainian troops by supplying equipment and supplies.”

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has been accused by critics of being too close to Moscow, said after the meeting that there were divisions on the issue among European leaders.

“There are countries that are willing to send their own soldiers to Ukraine, there are countries that say never – Slovakia is one of them – and there are countries that say this proposal should be considered,” he said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden, which is about to join NATO, threw cold water on the idea, saying: “It’s not in the plans at all at the moment.”

Italy said international support for Ukraine does not include the presence of ground troops, and warned against giving the impression of being “at war with Russia.”

“Since the start of Russian aggression two years ago, all allies have been united in the support they can offer Kiev,” the government said in a statement.

“This support does not provide for the presence on Ukrainian territory of troops from European or NATO countries.”

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal confirmed Macron’s comments on Tuesday, saying: “You cannot rule out anything in a war.”

He added: “I remember two years ago many around this table said we would offer sleeping bags and helmets, and now they say we need to do more and faster to have missiles and tanks.”

Russia and the United States – the major power behind NATO – have the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. President Joe Biden has warned that a conflict between Russia and NATO could trigger World War III.

After the Russian invasion in 2022, Western leaders said they would help Ukraine defeat Russian forces on the battlefield and expel Russian forces. But that didn’t happen.

Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive failed to break deeply entrenched Russian lines and Russia has pushed deeper into Ukrainian territory just as American support for Ukraine is embroiled in domestic political debates in the US.

A White House official told Reuters that the United States had no plans to send troops to fight in Ukraine, nor were there any plans to send NATO troops to fight in Ukraine.

Putin describes the United States and its allies as a crumbling empire that wants to destroy Russia and steal its natural resources. The West sees Putin as a dictator and a murderer, and Putin’s Russia as an enemy.

The United States has denied Russian claims that it wants to destroy Russia, but Biden called Putin a “crazy SOB” earlier this month and American sources have said Russia plans to place a nuclear weapon in space.

With Ukraine’s much anticipated counteroffensive stalling and Western military support waning, there are now real fears that Vladimir Putin could be victorious and destroy the nation. 

Any move to halt or reduce aid packages to Ukraine – as we’ve already seen with US Republicans blocking £50billion of funding – would play into Putin’s hands by kneecapping Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield against advancing Russian troops.

A victory for Russia wouldn’t just mean the ‘destruction’ of Ukraine and its people – it would be ‘catastrophic’ to the West and turn global world order on its head, warns Oleksandr Danylyuk, an associate fellow at the defence and security think tank RUSI. 

Indeed, a win for Russia against Ukraine would ‘undoubtedly’ result in the fall of NATO, ‘economic carnage’ for the West as well as the rise of foes including China, Iran and North Korea, retired US General Ben Hodges tells MailOnline.

At the crux of this is the fact that Russia and the Global South would see a Ukrainian defeat as a military loss for the West – it would show the world that NATO, led by the US, is capable of sacrificing a European nation in order to avoid a nuclear conflict.

And once autocrats realise that the US and the West are beatable, a nuclear war would be ‘inevitable’ and the world would be consumed in bloodshed, Danylyuk says in a terrifying prediction. 

Indeed, Danylyuk says the world will have been watching as Ukraine, which gave up the world’s third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in 1993, was defeated by Russia’s military amid daily threats of Moscow incinerating the country with nukes. 

And that would send a strong message: The only way for non-nuclear states to protect themselves against an attack by countries with nukes – like China and Russia – would be to have weapons of mass destruction of their own. 

Yet with the number of nations possessing nuclear arsenals increasing, it would be ‘only a matter of time’ before a state – or terrorist organisation – uses them, Danylyuk says. 

‘Breaking the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons would create a new reality, the tragic characteristics of which are hard to imagine,’ Danylyuk says in the RUSI report.

Ultimately, a victory would see a ‘catastrophic’ change to world order that would have devastating consequences for civilians living across Europe and the US. 

It would destroy the perception of the US as the world’s military power and encourage countries such as China, Iran and North Korea to continue their military expansion, Danylyuk says. 

‘A Russian victory would also force the countries of the Global South to seek special relationships with these countries, displacing the US as an international security broker,’ Danylyuk, who is an expert in multidimensional warfare, says.  

Gen. Hodges, the former Commanding General of US Army Europe, agrees and says a Russian victory would see the rise of the Kremlin’s allies. 

He says Iran and North Korea will most likely manage to develop effective nuclear weapons in the next few years, which will pose a direct threat to the West and could lead to a nuclear war that would see tens of thousands killed. 

‘That’s why it’s so important now to have a nuclear deterrent,’ Gen. Hodges says. ‘If we allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear capabilities then we are going to be regretting that forever.’ 

He said a Russian victory would also mean that nuclear states – Pakistan, India, North Korea, Iran – would become unstable and could result in terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons and launching terror attacks on the streets of Europe. 

‘Lots of these countries would become more unsettled and fragile,’ Gen. Hodges says.

And as the West descends into years of instability while Russia casts its iron grip over Ukraine, Gen. Hodges says Putin will set his sights on launching an attack on NATO soil.

He says a Trump presidency would open the door even further for Putin to launch his attack on Europe because of the Republican’s lack of support for NATO. 

Gen. Hodges says if Donald Trump is elected in November, it would weaken NATO and could leave Europe as ‘sitting ducks’ for Putin and his forces without any protection.

Gen. Hodges says if Putin believes that NATO is becoming ‘disunified’ due to a Trump presidency, the Russian warmonger would think ‘we can attack now’. 

Indeed, he believes that if Trump was president, the likelihood of Putin launching an invasion and sparking WW3 would massively increase. 

And without the protection of US troops – especially the US nuclear umbrella – European countries ‘will not be able to defend themselves in the event of a full-scale war’ with a nuclear state such as Russia, Danylyuk says.

Gen. Hodges says it would be ‘foolish’ to assume that Putin could not invade a Baltic country – like Lithuania, Poland or Estonia – and wreak havoc on civilians across Europe.

In one scenario, Gen. Hodges says Moscow could first attack the narrow strip of land known as Suwalki Gap, sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. 

Even a small attack on this weak point – the only land border between mainland Europe and the Baltic States – could cause huge problems for NATO.

Gen. Hodges said if Putin was successful in blocking the Suwalki gap, Russian forces would use that strip of land and Belarus as a launchpad for the second phase of their offensive. 

And that second phase would involve sending thousands of Russian soldiers, tanks and special forces, to attack one of the Baltic states on NATO’s eastern flank – most likely either Lithuania, Poland or Estonia.

William Freer, a research fellow at the think tank Geostrategy, says Russia could likely launch a ‘mass hypersonic attack early in the conflict’ to ‘sow chaos and open vulnerabilities’.  

Gen. Hodges says how NATO responded to an attack on an allied soil will determine the future of Western civilisation and could ‘destroy’ the alliance. 

‘If we hesitated, that failure to live up to our obligations under Article 5 to protect member states, it would break the alliance,’ Gen. Hodges tells MailOnline from his home in Frankfurt, Germany.

Indeed, Gen. Hodges said if it just came down to military capabilities, NATO forces –  with their better soldiers and equipment – would defeat Russia in an all-out war. 

But, he said: ‘The way we would lose is if we failed to respond, if we failed to stick together, if we moved too slowly to protect our NATO members.’ 

Gen. Hodges said it ‘worries him a lot’ that NATO forces ‘cannot move very quickly across Europe’ due to the terrain and how built up much of the area is. 

‘The way we would fail would be if we didn’t react quick enough or hesitated,’ Gen Hodges says. 

‘If the Russians were able to accomplish some penetration of a NATO state of the eastern flank – like Estonia or Lithuania – and then Moscow dared us to do something about it, that would be the real test.’

The retired US General says that if NATO did hesitate, Putin would not stop there. He would deploy his Russian Navy for a vital mission: taking control of the northern Arctic route and reaping in the economic benefits while leaving the West out cold. 

Gen Hodges warns that a win for Russia against a NATO state would mean further  ‘economic carnage’ for the West, the rise of foes including China and the end of the international rules-based order as we know it. 

‘If Russia was successful and won the war, from an economic standpoint, it would be carnage,’ Gen. Hodges tells MailOnline. 

‘The international-rules based order from which the US and the UK have benefited for the last 80 years would be turned upside down,’ Hodges says in an ominous prediction. 

‘Financial markets, control of energy resources, all of this would be in a completely precarious and different state,’ Gen. Hodges says. ‘A big part of a successful economy is confidence – and Russia breaking NATO would shift that. 

‘That would be a major problem for the economy and the various international organisations – like the UN – which make up the rules-based order,’ Hodges says, referring to the international liberal order established by the victorious allies after the Second World War.

‘It would all be turned on its head and there would be chaos and we’d have to try to find another way back to stability,’ Hodges says.

He said Putin would focus his efforts on taking control of the northern Arctic route. With the polar ice cap melting due to climate change, new shipping routes are becoming all the more accessible.

‘Russia will want to dominate that northern route, it would make it much quicker for them to sail over the top of the world and benefit Moscow economically,’ Gen. Hodges said. 

‘With their long-range weapons, they would be able to dominate what goes in and out of the North Atlantic from the Arctic,’ he added, saying this would be economically catastrophic for the West. 

And as West descends into economic turmoil and Russia continues to cast its iron grip over eastern Europe and the Arctic, Gen. Hodges says China will be watching eagerly from the side-lines.

He said Beijing could launch an attack of its own on Taiwan if it saw that the US and its allies had been unsuccessful in defending Baltic states from a Russian invasion. 

‘If China saw that the United States and its allies were unsuccessful against a Russian invasion, that we lost – and the losses that we would have sustained would have been enormous – then I think Beijing will not feel restrained to do what they want,’ Gen. Hodges says.

‘If China saw that Russia could create carnage, China would take advantage of this and could launch their own attack on Taiwan for instance,’ Gen. Hodges adds.

Analysts believe Putin intends to destroy Ukraine – which is relying heavily on support from its allies, particularly the US – before setting his sights beyond Ukraine’s western borders, with the Baltic states in particular under threat. 

With his invasion in Ukraine at a stalemate, Putin has also switched his economy onto a war footing, meaning weapons factories are producing arms around the clock.

What’s more, Putin’s allies in Iran and North Korea are also propping his forces up with arms, meaning Russia can build up its defences faster than previously thought.

A series of military officials from across NATO and Europe have warned that this means that Putin could be ready to wage a war against the West in the next two or three years. 

Meanwhile Admiral Rob Bauer, the chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, warned last week that the alliance must brace itself for an all-out war with Russia in the next two decades. This came as secret plans were leaked revealing that Germany is preparing for Putin‘s forces to attack NATO as early as 2025.

Gen. Hodges said for NATO to be able to respond effectively, the military alliance needs to move more troops to the eastern flank along with equipment and arsenal. 

If the alliance does this now, in 2024, it could stop Putin from ever invading one of the countries on NATO’s eastern flank as the despot will know he couldn’t take the West by surprise, Gen. Hodges says. 

Norway’s defence minister Eirik Kristoffersen said last week that Europe has a matter of years – maybe as little as three – to prepare for a war against Russia. 

Kristoffersen pointed out that Moscow has built up its military stockpiles far quicker than expected.

‘Russia has increased production significantly,’ Kristoffersen told NTB.

‘They have also collaborated with countries such as Iran and North Korea, which means that we can get a faster build-up of the Russian defence than what we envisioned just last year,’ he added.

‘So we must use the time well now to strengthen our own defence.’

Norway also shares a border with Russia at Europe’s most northern point and is thus vital to the continent’s defence strategy against Putin’s forces.

Relative peace in Europe was shattered in February 2022 with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and kicked European nations into action. 

Germany, for example, dramatically ramped up its defence spending, while Finland swiftly joined NATO. Sweden is set to follow once its application is approved. 

However, Kristoffersen warns that much of Europe’s military supply is being sunk into Ukraine to support Kyiv’s forces in their fight against the invading Russians.

He points out that the same can be said of Russia, which has sunk vast supplies of military hardware – as well as soldiers – into its war, with limited success.

With Russia having found ways to quickly replenish and expand its supply of weapons, Kristoffersen says it is vital for NATO to continue to support Ukraine – currently Europe’s the first line of defence – ‘for as long as it takes’. 

‘This is a calculated risk,’ he says. ‘If the danger was imminent of an attack by Norway right now, then we could not have given so many weapons. But that is not the case.’

Gen. Hodges echoes this sentiment, and says if we want to ‘avoid this terrible scenario’ of Putin invading a NATO county, ‘we need to help Ukraine win’. 

‘We need to help Ukraine push Russia into the abyss and defeat them,’ Gen. Hodges says, adding that if the West does not increase its spending and supplies to Ukraine, a country on NATO’s eastern flank will be next on Putin’s list. 

Ahead of last week’s NATO meeting in Brussels, NATO Military Committee Admiral Rob Bauer urged countries to ensure they are prepared conflict.

‘We need public and private actors to change their mindset for an era in which everything was plannable, foreseeable, controllable and focused on efficiency to an era in which anything can happen at any time. An era in which we need to expect the unexpected,’ he said as he opened the meeting.

‘In order to be fully effective, also in the future, we need a warfighting transformation of NATO,’ Bauer added.

Kristoffersen echoed this comments when asked what this means for Norway and other NATO countries. 

‘Concretely, this means that we must fill NATO’s plans with content and provide the necessary capacities,’ he told the Norwegian press agency. ‘The challenge for NATO now is that there are some gaps here.’

Specifically, he warned that air defence and long-range weapons are lacking.

‘More investment must be made in air defence,’ he said. ‘It also means that we have to have more in stock, both when it comes to ammunition and spare parts.’

He also agreed with his Swedish counterpart, Commander-in-Chief Mikael Bydén, who recently called on all Swedes to prepare for war.

‘What the Norwegian population should think about is their own preparedness, which was actually what Bydén was also talking about. We recommend everyone to have three days (worth of supplies at home) to manage themselves.

‘And we also recommend increasing it if you are very vulnerable,’ he added.

That urgency for governments and civilians to prepare for war has since crossed over the Channel to Britain. 

On Wednesday, General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the UK’s army, said Britain should ‘train and equip’ a ‘citizen army’ to ready the country for a potential land war. 

But Sanders, the outgoing Chief of the General Staff (CGS), said even that would be ‘not enough’ as he pointed to allies in eastern and northern Europe ‘laying the foundations for national mobilisation’.

The military top brass said increasing Army numbers in preparation for a potential conflict would need to be a ‘whole-of-nation undertaking’, meaning that men and women across the UK should be ready for a call-up to the armed forces. 

It comes after Defence Secretary Grant Shapps in a speech last week said the world is ‘moving from a post-war to pre-war world’ and the UK must ensure its ‘entire defence ecosystem is ready’ to defend its homeland.

But Downing Street ruled out any move towards a conscription model, saying that Army service would remain voluntary. 

Sir Patrick said on Wednesday Britain could not rely on its navy and air power, arguing ‘we must be able to credibly fight and win wars on land’.

He said: ‘We need an Army designed to expand rapidly to enable the first echelon, resource the second echelon and train and equip the citizen army that must follow.

‘Within the next three years, it must be credible to talk of a British Army of 120,000, folding in our reserve and strategic reserve. But this is not enough.

‘Our friends in eastern and northern Europe, who feel the proximity of the Russian threat more acutely, are already acting prudently, laying the foundations for national mobilisation.

‘As the chairman of the NATO military committee warned just last week, and as the Swedish government has done, preparing Sweden for entry to NATO, taking preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing when needed are now not merely desirable but essential.

‘We will not be immune and as the pre-war generation we must similarly prepare – and that is a whole-of-nation undertaking.

‘Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.’

He also made a pitch for more backing for the Army, saying those serving ‘rightly want the equipment that enables them to deliver lethal capability’.

Last week, a former chief of the general staff of the British Army said the UK risks a repeat of the 1930s unless more is invested in its armed forces.

General Lord Dannatt hit out at the shrinking size of the army, which he said has fallen from 102,000 in 2006 to 74,000 today and is still ‘falling fast’.

He drew parallels with the 1930s when the ‘woeful’ state of the UK’s armed forces failed to deter Adolf Hitler, saying there is ‘a serious danger of history repeating itself’.

It comes as NATO this week mobilised 90,000 troops in its largest military manoeuvre since the Cold War, with the war games aimed at deterring Putin from targeting a member country. 

The alliance announced the exercise would begin this week, with the months of drills aimed at showing the alliance can defend all of its territory up to its border with Russia. 

The exercises – dubbed ‘Steadfast Defender’ – will run until late May and involve units from all 31 NATO member countries plus candidate-member Sweden, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, US General Christopher Cavoli, said.

The exercises will involve 90,000 troops rehearsing how U.S. soldiers could reinforce European allies in countries bordering Russia and on the alliance’s eastern flank if a conflict were to flare up with a ‘near-peer’ adversary. 

The wargames are meant as a fresh show of strength from NATO and its commitment to defend all allied nations from attack.

‘The Alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area by a transatlantic movement of forces from North America,’ Cavoli told reporters in Brussels after a two-day meeting of national chiefs of defence last week. 

The UK is sending 20,000 troops with the Royal Navy’s two new aircraft carriers, eight warships, as well as the RAF’s F-35 lightning attack aircraft, which will practice flying in imitated conflict scenarios.

In response, Russia said the NATO exercises mark an ‘irrevocable return’ of the alliance to Cold War Schemes. 

‘These exercises are another element of the hybrid war unleashed by the West against Russia,’ Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushk said on Sunday. 

‘An exercise of this scale… marks the final and irrevocable return of NATO to the Cold War schemes, when the military planning process, resources and infrastructure are being prepared for confrontation with Russia.’