Some 2,000 soldiers would be sent in the “initial stage” of the operation, Sergey Naryshkin said
France is preparing its forces for deployment to Ukraine, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin claimed in a statement on Tuesday. Paris allegedly seeks to send as many as 2,000 troops to Ukraine, he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said last month that he “cannot exclude” the possibility of Western soldiers being sent to aid Kiev in its fight against Moscow, branding Russia an “adversary” while denying Paris was “waging war” against it.
In the statement on Tuesday, the SVR chief said the French Armed Forces had become “concerned” about the rising number of French [mercenary] nationals dying in Ukraine.
The casualty level has supposedly surpassed a “psychological threshold” and could trigger protests, the statement said, adding that Macron’s government was concealing this information and “delaying” the moment it would have to be revealed.
According to the spy chief, the French military is worried about the government’s plans to send the contingent to Ukraine, considering that such an operation would be difficult to conduct without Russia noticing.
The French soldiers would indeed become “a legitimate priority target for attacks by the Russian Armed Forces,” Naryshkin said.
The claims come as the chief of staff of the French Army, Gen. Pierre Schill, said in an interview on Tuesday that France is prepared to take part in the “toughest engagements” militarily, and is ready to face any international developments. He added that Paris could assemble a division of 20,000 troops within 30 days and an army of 60,000 by joining with divisions from other NATO allies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has also claimed this week that Western mercenaries, including French nationals, are dying in Ukraine “in large numbers.” Commenting on a potential NATO deployment to Ukraine, the president also warned that this would be “one step shy of a full-scale World War III.”
(non-archived link: https://www.rt.com/news/594517-france-prepare-deploy-troops-ukraine/)
I never claimed NATO was not involved in Ukraine. That is not in dispute by anyone of good faith. Obviously the US is intimately involved but Russia has no interest in nuking Rammstein air base or something because they're providing them intelligence. They're very carefully trying to manage this and have been at every step trying to avoid widening the conflict or even having it with their withdrawal from Kiev early in the war as a show of good faith for the peace process.
Fact is Euros have some independence just like Isn'treal does. They can buck their master a bit on exact details of the plan and France more than others given what's happened in Africa to its neo-colonies has more reason to be angry and gloomy about the effects of a loss here. US could put them back in line but they probably don't think it's a problem for the plan if a few thousand French die in Ukraine.