During remarks made in an April 1 interview with Austrian media outlet Die Presse, which were translated into English by RT News, he added that under current plans no forces will take part in active fighting against Russia. Pevkur said that NATO personnel are serving only as advisers and are involved in training Ukrainian soldiers in Poland, the U.K., and Estonia, adding that western defense officials are planning to setup training camps in Ukraine. “The reality is that every NATO member country already has military personnel in Ukraine, such as military attaches or people who travel to Ukraine from time to time,” the official said. “What [French] President [Emmanuel] Macron said mainly related to personnel training." France has been the subject of speculation following recent mixed signals as to whether it would be sending military personnel to Ukraine. Sergey Naryshkin, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), two weeks ago said his agency has information that France is preparing a military contingent of 2,000 troops to be sent to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia. The French defense ministry responded by denouncing the comments as “disinformation and irresponsible.” Earlier in the year, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that war would be “inevitable” if NATO deployed a physical troop presence to Ukraine. Pevkur’s assertion that military members are already in Ukraine comes as NATO debates a plan to provide long-term assistance to the war-torn country. “We strongly believe that support to Ukraine should be less dependent on short-term, voluntary offers and more dependent on long-term NATO commitments,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. “The reason why we do this is the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine. It is serious,” Stoltenberg told reporters. “We see how Russia is pushing, and we see how they try to win this war by just waiting us out.” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy is now saying that Russia is preparing to send another 300,000 soldiers to Ukraine. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the claim, telling Russian state media outlet TASS, “This is not true.”Every NATO member country already has troops on the ground in Ukraine, according to Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur.
