It's just communication.

There will never be any french troops in Ukraine during the conflict.

It's very clear in the army at least both in higher-ups and in troops I think.

Advisors, trainers and other types of support definitely but there will not be any french troops in Ukraine.

Macron might say the complete opposite in a few months it is meaningless.

This is part of the purposefully ambiguous strategy our army wants to push. We just don't want to have a too detailed limit to what Russia can and cannot do before we act. But technically it's fairly irrelevant here since it's a NATO issue.

People shouldn't think much to what our president says. This is a diversion to avoid talking about other subjects.

Did he do so?

The last I heard was that he wasn't ruling out sending ground troops to Ukraine – which is what UK is already doing. Mind, that ground troops aren't soldiers per se, but mostly technical personell supporting the usage of weapons, for example repairing equipment and helping with the programming of missiles. But I haven't heard any plans from him – just the classical strategic ambiguity.

But to be honest, I don't follow french politics in detail.

I mean, Macron was always supportive of stronger European military cooperation, and France always had that “screw the US” mentality and always insisted on strategic autonomy

Well the carrot didn't work, so it's on to plan b