President Emmanuel Macron was roundly attacked by French opposition leaders, Russian officials and even some of Paris's NATO allies after saying in February that he would not "rule out" the deployment of French troops to Ukraine. Macron repeated the threat late last week.
France is preparing to deploy a contingent of troops in Ukraine, with the first echelon to include about 2,000 soldiers, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergei Naryshkin has announced.
"The country's current leadership does not care about the death of ordinary Frenchmen and the concerns of the country's generals. According to information received by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, a contingent of troops is already being prepared to be sent to Ukraine. At the initial stage, it will number about 2,000 people," Naryshkin said in a statement Tuesday.
According to the SVR head's information, France's generals are concerned about the difficulty of transferring such a large force to Ukraine and stationing it there unnoticed.
Naryshkin warned that any French forces arriving in Ukraine "will become a legitimate priority target" for Russia's military, with the same fate to await them as has already befallen those who fell during previous instances of French aggression against Moscow.
The SVR head also confirmed that those French nationals already in Ukraine (presumably fighting as mercenaries), have suffered losses not experienced by Paris since Algeria's war of liberation against French control in the 1960s, hence concerns among the military leadership about the threat of discontent among mid-level officers in the French Army about the prospects of being deployed in Ukraine.
President Macron has been the loudest voice among any NATO leaders in warning that he wouldn't rule out sending troops to Ukraine "at some point."
"Maybe at some point - I don't want it, I won't take the initiative - we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces," Macron told Le Parisien last Friday. "France's strength is that we can do it," he added.
Macron riled up his NATO allies, particularly Germany, in early March by urging Europe not to be "cowards" in supporting the Kiev regime using all available means.If late February, he warned that he wouldn't "rule out" sending French forces east. The president was roundly condemned by French opposition leaders for his remarks, with politicians both on the left and the right accusing him of playing with the lives of the French people and risking a new world war for the sake of his personal geopolitical ambitions.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova went further, accusing Macron of trying to recreate "French SS Division Charlemagne II to defend President Volodymyr Zelensky's bunker."
The extent of the French mercenary presence in Ukraine was revealed in January, when a Russian missile strike killed and injured dozens of fighters in Kharkov.
No comments:
Post a Comment