If you scrolled through the news on Monday evening, your eyebrows may have felt a slight curl if they came across reports of France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, claiming that the deployment of Western troops to Ukraine “could no longer be ruled out” as a response to Russia’s ongoing invasion. It’s the type of brash sally that has become a hallmark of Macron’s diplomacy in recent years — cheap audacity making up for the absence of real strategy and political options.

The statement came at the conclusion of a meeting of European heads of government in the French capital on February 26. With Russian forces again on the offensive just as Washington’s commitment to the war is looking increasingly tenuous, Ukraine’s European backers are scrambling to find ways to shore up support for Kiev.

The European Union approved a new round of financial assistance to the Ukrainian state on February 1, but a larger US military package — part of an omnibus foreign aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan — is currently stalled in Congress. The twenty-seven-state European bloc is confronting the fragility of its stretched defense industry and the depleted military stockpiles of member states after two years of war, just as it faces the long-term prospect of becoming Ukraine’s only committed sponsor.