If NATO is so much against sending troops to Ukraine, why doesn't NATO demand that the soldiers already there be sent home?

On Monday, February 26, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Germany would not provide its Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine because doing so would require German troops to be sent there to operate them, just as the British are operating the Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles.

The British cried foul and accused Scholz of a "flagrant abuse of intelligence" – meaning that Scholz confirmed what everyone already knows, that NATO officers and trained personnel are in Ukraine operating weapons such as the Patriot and NASAM air defense system, the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, the British-French Storm Shadow cruise missile (SCALP-EG in France), and many other complex weapons provided to Ukraine.

The actual number of personnel from NATO countries in Ukraine isn't known, but there is no doubt they are there in large numbers and they come from the United States, the UK, France, Poland, and others. When these "volunteers" are wounded or killed, what happened to them is obscured and their roles, often, are listed as medical or social. More recently combat status, at least in the US, is being recognized.

On February 29 Putin gave his annual two-hour-long State of the Nation address. He warned that NATO's sending troops to Ukraine could risk nuclear war. In part, Putin was responding to French President Emmanuel Macron's statement about NATO sending troops to Ukraine to head off a Russian victory. While Macron's statement gained no traction among EU leaders, the fact that sending troops was discussed openly at an EU forum obviously ratcheted up NATO-Russia tensions.