Team America beat them to it....
Posted on 05/05/2024 8:29:22 AM PDT by Drew68
France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine. They have been deployed in support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanized Brigade in Slavyansk. The French soldiers are drawn from France’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, which is one of the main elements of France’s Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère).
In 2022 France had a number of Ukrainians and Russians in the Foreign Legion. They were allowed to leave the Legion and, in the case of the Ukrainians, return to Ukraine to join Ukrainian forces. It isn’t clear if the Russians returned home.
The Legion today is run by French officers but the rank and file are all foreigners. Under the curren anonymat (being anonymous) a volunteer who joins the Legion can decide whether to keep his given name or adopt a new one. Legionnaires serve for three year terms, after which they can ask for French citizenship. If a legionnaire is wounded, he is entitled to gain French citizenship without any waiting period. There are no women in the Foreign Legion.
The initial group of French troops numbers around 100. This is just the first tranche of around 1,500 French Foreign Legion soldiers scheduled to arrive in Ukraine.
These troops are being posted directly in a hot combat area and are intended to help the Ukrainians resist Russian advances in Donbas. The first 100 are artillery and surveillance specialists.
For months French President Emanuel Macron has been threatening to send French troops to Ukraine. He has found little or no support from NATO countries outside of support from Poland and the Baltic States. Allegedly the US opposes sending NATO soldiers to Ukraine (other than as advisors).
One of the questions to immediately arise from France’s decision to send soldiers from its 3rd Infantry Regiment is whether this crosses the Russian red line on NATO involvement in Ukraine? Will the Russians see this as initiating a wider war beyond Ukraine’s borders?
France itself does not have many troops to put on Ukraine’s battlelines, should the French government want to do so. According to reports, today France cannot support an overseas deployment of a full division and won’t have this capability until 2027 at the earliest.
The decision to send Foreign Legionnaires is, itself, a peculiar French compromise. France is not deploying its home army and, besides the small number of officers, the men sent are not French citizens.
France’s decision has two meanings, beyond the obvious one of potentially triggering a pan-European war.
First of all, it allows Macron to send troops to Ukraine and act like a tough guy without encountering much home opposition. That’s because no French army soldiers are being sent and there is no consequent conscription or other measures in the offing. This clearly reduces the potential fury of Macron’s political opponents.
The second reason is Macron’s anger at seeing French troops, almost all from the Legion, getting kicked out of Sahelian Africa and replaced by Russians. Control of Francophone Africa, and the riches it provides to French politicians, has been broken by the revolt and revolution in Africa and a decisive tilt to Russia – either directly or through PMC Wagner (the Wagner Group). now clearly under Vladimir Putin’s direct control.
This “humiliation” is felt in the Élysée Palace and particularly by Macron who, his opponents say, has lost France’s influence and harmed France’s overseas mining and business interests.
A particular blow is in Niger, an important supplier of uranium to France. France gets 70 percent of its electrical power from nuclear power generators. Global uranium supplies are tightening and prices rising. With Russia and Kazakhstan, along with Niger, on the top of the heap in terms of supplying uranium for nuclear reactors, France has a home economic security problem. The US decision to ban Russian uranium (but probably not realistically, in the next few years) the Russians could deal a serious blow to France and the United States by cutting off supplies.
Given the risk of losing access to uranium, or at least enough of it to supply France’s reactors, Macron has to hope that his troop deployments to Ukraine won’t trigger a Russian embargo on sales to France.
It isn’t clear how the Legionnaires can help the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians know how to operate artillery, and they have sophisticated intelligence support, some of it generated by their own FPV drones and spies and some of it thanks to US and other NATO intelligence and surveillance assets supporting Ukraine.
Anyway, the Ukrainian issue is not about how to use artillery but where the ammunition is supposed to come from. Ukraine continues to complain it lacks adequate supplies for 155mm howitzers.
The decision to put the Legion soldiers in Slavyansk is extremely provocative and goes against statements from the French side, including Macron, to the effect that if France sent troops they would replace Ukrainian army units in western Ukraine who could, therefore, be moved eastward to fight the Russians. As Slavyansk is on the front line, this French image of a soft deployment is turning into a war with Russia directly.
Let’s see how the French people respond to soldiers coming back in body bags. Not very well, I imagine.
Macron's goal is to try to lure us into this war.
France is one of the founder countries of NATO and is still in it.
The irony is, that it was France’s idiotic alliance with Russia that got WWI going in the first place.
Always count on the French to eff things up!
*It is in NATO. It sort of left but came back...*
I’m old enough to remember DEGaulle kicking us out-young enough to remember France joining ‘41’s anti-Saddam coalition with ONE soldier who never left Paris.
*1,500 French Foreign Legion fighters sent to Ukraine.* That’s the scary part. They’ll fight to the last foreigner.-surrender monkeys.
*FRANCE IS IN NATO. Omg, at least google something before you post it.*
That’s what you’re for.
*This is a Continental European Power deploying Soldiers in the field against Russian Regulars. This is the sort of Idiocracy that leads to World Wars.*
It ain’t me that’s doing it. Think of when they blew up the Greenpeace ship in New Zealand-idiocy spelled right.
France is the pedojoe of European nations, but with none of the style or grace.
"Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean."
With their Force de Frappe, not all that vulnerable.
And having most of Central Europe as a buffer zone between themselves and the Soviets - er, Russians.
Regards,
Hopefully they get located quickly and wiped out.
> And it’s very uneducated to call the French soldiers cowards. <
I totally, 100% agree. They behaved heroically at the Battle of Verdun in WW1. And during WW2 the British were able to evacuate at Dunkirk largely because of stubborn defensive action by the French First Army at Lille.
Yes, France surrendered quickly in WW2. But that had nothing to do with French cowardice. The Germans were better organized and had better generals.
> In this case is a classic example of the lunacy of the French government. <
I’ve done some looking around the Internet. I could be wrong, but I think this Foreign Legion to Ukraine story is fake news.
It's not Russia in Mexico fomenting illegal coups, installing puppet governments that are hostile to us and training and funding a 600,000 man army hostile to this country.
But, WE DID THAT IN UKRAINE.
We are provocateurs. We stir up color revolutions, setoff civil wars and destabilize nations, all for the benefit of our elite and feed the defense industry.
And, all that is endangering our national security and endangering the dollar as the reserve currency in the world, which endangers our economic security.
I'm so sick of Zeeper freaks projecting the evils our elite onto Russia and other countries.
Speaking specifically about the French Foreign Legion:
http://foreignlegion.info/
April 2024:
http://foreignlegion.info/2024/04/
May 2024:
http://foreignlegion.info/2024/05/
There are some former members of the FFL, now fighting alongside Ukraine troops inside Ukraine - some of them, as members of Ukraine’s international legion.
There are some Russians who were former members of the FFL, now fighting alongside Russian troops inside Ukraine.
But there is no regiment of the FFL, stationed in, nor heading to Ukraine at this time [May 5, 2024].
March 7, 2022:
https://foreignlegion.info/2022/03/07/french-foreign-legion-and-ukraine/
FFL HQ then assured Ukrainians who are members of the FFL, that they may take 2 weeks leave, in order to affect improvements regarding the security of their families.
Otherwise, there are some French Troops operating in non-combat roles in Ukraine.
Footnote: Members of the FFL, are from around the world - including from France.
It is hard to see what he gets out of it. France fighting in Ukraine is nothing but a cost center. And at this exact moment France is losing its de facto colonies across equatorial Africa that provide untold income for France. Maybe he’s trying to restore his wounded pride then do anything about losing those colonies.
French Generals were trying to fight WWI in 1940.
And as far as The Maginot Line, well, Patton said it best, “Fixed Fortifications are monuments to The Stupidity of Man.”
You are OK.
So Russia can bomb the Eiffel Tower now?
No mention in French press, so I strongly suspect this is bull.
Your memory is really not on par today. In desert storm the French sent an armored division that participated in everything. And they had the best food by far, and they actually brought wine for their soldiers. Unlike our teetotaling leaders in the US military.
Never left Paris… Indeed.
The 2024 Olympics will feature a 100 man HamAss Paragliding display complete with automatic gunfire and coordinated pickup truck attacks and abductions.
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