Francois Mauld d’Aymee, a French officer-turned Donbass People’s Militia volunteer, told Sputnik on Thursday about mercenaries from France and Canada fighting for the Kiev regime in Ukraine.
Paris has rejected a recent statement by Russia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) explaining that a Russian airstrike destroyed a building in Ukraine hosting French mercenaries, among others.
“France has no mercenaries either in Ukraine or anywhere else,” the French Foreign Ministry argued, calling the MoD’s statement "another clumsy Russian manipulation."
Why do the French claims hold no water? Sputnik explores.
Mercenaries Issue Discussed Through Diplomatic Channels
Normally, discussions about the destruction of a foreign mercenary hideout in Kharkov in which French citizens were affected would be held through diplomatic channels.
Nonetheless, no such requests for high-level talks have been received, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
On Thursday, the French Ambassador to Russia Pierre Levy was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry in connection with the incident.
"There is a conversation going on through our diplomats. There were no proposals to hold a conversation at the highest level. We have stated repeatedly that many foreign mercenaries are fighting on Kiev's side, and each time our statement is confirmed again," Peskov told reporters.
Kremlin Has Proof - Russian MP
The fact of Ambassador Levy being summoned indicates that French mercenaries were among those killed in the Kharkov facility, Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy chairman of the Russian Upper House’s International Affairs Committee, said in an interview with Russian media.
"I think that when the ambassador is summoned to the Foreign Ministry, it means that they have precise evidence that there was a base of French mercenaries in that building," Dzhabarov said.
He recalled that even though mercenary activities are prohibited in France, the country’s hirelings took part in all mercenary operations, including in Africa and Ukraine, where they “really profiled themselves.”
Donbass Volunteer Opens Up
A separate insight came from Francois Mauld d’Aymee, a French officer-turned-Donbass People’s Militia volunteer, who recently opened up about French-speaking mercenaries in Ukraine.
Mauld d’Aymee described the hired guns as “sports enthusiasts [and] drug addicts" in an exclusive interview with Sputnik.
"Representatives of the French mercenary movement vary greatly. French-speaking Canadian mercenaries are worth mentioning. They, by and large, come from radical nationalist circles, and see the conflict as an opportunity to realize their pathetic dreams of replaying the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War. In other words, they’re openly Nazis, Hitlerites, and freely organize the dispatch of new militants from training centers which they own in Paris and Lyon," Mauld d’Aymee said.
He added that a "very small number" of those mercenaries “actually fight because their level of Ukrainian or Russian is too basic," which is why they’re “mostly kept in reserve.” According to Mauld d’Aymee, most of those hirelings on the front line have been wounded or killed.
520 Foreign Mercenaries on Ukrainian Soil
The Russian Investigative Committee reported in November that more than 520 foreign mercenaries fighting for Ukraine from 44 countries, including France, became involved in criminal cases.
No comments:
Post a Comment