National Rally president Jordan Bardella and French Socialist Party's Olivier Faure slam Emmanuel Macron's comments of not ruling out putting French troops on the ground in Ukraine but those remarks are defended by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal who said 'we fight to defend our values'.
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00:00Just days before France's first-round snap elections to choose all 577 members of the National Assembly,
00:09French television has hosted a debate featuring three major party and coalition leaders.
00:15Prime Minister Gabriel Attal of the ruling Renaissance Party,
00:19National Rally President Jordan Bardella and Olivier Faure representing the new Popular Front coalition took part.
00:27Purchasing power and domestic security were debated, but it was the war in Ukraine that dominated.
00:34Jordan Bardella said he wouldn't let Russian imperialism absorb an allied state like Ukraine,
00:40but ruled out sending French troops to fight.
00:57That was an apparent rebuttal to President Emmanuel Macron's remarks in May,
01:09in which he said he hadn't ruled out putting French boots on the ground in Ukraine.
01:14Olivier Faure also blasted Macron's remarks, saying not even the Ukrainians expected French troops to fight alongside them.
01:23He insisted that the new Popular Front coalition is against French troop deployments,
01:43but isn't opposed to sending long-range missiles to Ukraine.
01:48But Macron's position was defended by his Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
01:53The snap parliamentary elections were called by Emmanuel Macron on June 9th,
02:20the night his Renaissance Party lost big to the far-right National Rally in the EU elections.
02:26The first round of voting takes place on June 30th, with the second round scheduled for July 7th.