I'm ready to start a Macron fan club

From Reuters, a report on the most foresighted and humane statement yet to come from any Western leader on the catastrophe that is Ukraine:

French President Emmanuel Macron wanted to create "strategic ambiguity" by openly discussing the idea of sending Western troops to Ukraine, but he was so ambiguous that he sparked confusion and irritation among some allies.

Macron's comments at a late-night news conference ... fit with his reputation as a diplomatic disruptor who likes to break taboos and challenge conventional thinking.

By declining on Monday night to rule out putting Western boots on the ground in Ukraine, Macron was challenging the prevailing view that such a move would gravely escalate the risk of a global war between NATO and Russia.

His comments may turn out to be prescient and pave the way for greater direct Western involvement in the war in Ukraine against Russia’s invasion sometime down the line.

But they also run the risk of undermining the very thing Macron sought to bolster with the Paris meeting – unity among Ukraine’s Western allies as Kyiv's forces struggle to hold off Russian troops two years into the war.

Later, French officials reduced Macron's "ambiguity." They "were sent out to explain that Macron had wanted to stimulate debate and that ideas under discussion involved non-combat troops." Not exactly true, but even the lesser steps outlined by Sejourne are in the right direction. 

That would be French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne, who said "we must consider new actions to support Ukraine. These must respond to very specific needs, I am thinking in particular of mine clearance, cyberdefence, the production of weapons on site, on Ukrainian territory."

What to me is endlessly peculiar — in fact, downright stupefying — about this war is that Vladimir Putin is allowed by the international community to put brutalizing Russian boots on Ukrainian ground and mass-murdering bombers and drones in its air yet the idea of Western leaders putting liberation boots on Ukrainian ground is prohibited and considered dangerously escalatory.

Putin can invade and then escalate at will — but there shall be no military equilibrium imposed by the West. I'm damn glad Britain and France didn't feel this way when Hitler invaded Poland.