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Macron's Mirage pledge and Moscow's warning on instructors
Summary
A look back at the French announcement of fighter jets for Ukraine, and the Russian threat that preceded it.
What did France promise Ukraine on 6 June 2024? President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would send Dassault Mirage 2000-5 fighter aircraft to Ukraine and would train Ukrainian pilots to fly them by the end of 2024.
The announcement came as part of the wider flow of military aid to Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War. It combined equipment with training, tying the delivery of the aircraft to a timetable that ran to the end of the year.
Two days earlier, on 4 June 2024, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had warned that French military instructors would be "legitimate targets" if they were deployed to Ukraine. The warning was aimed at France and touched on the question of foreign trainers on Ukrainian soil, a matter bound up with Russia–NATO relations.
Taken together, the two statements, made within roughly 48 hours of each other, set out the positions in Paris and Moscow on French support for Kyiv: a public commitment to provide jets and pilot training, and a public threat against French instructors who might be sent to Ukraine.
