Posted on 03/14/2024 7:59:12 AM PDT by Red Badger
The French paper Marianne has published excerpts by secret military documents that are causing an uproar in Europe and the world, for dealing with the situation on the ground in Ukraine without the disguise of propaganda that pervades almost all reports on the subject.
In the piece, the French journalists wanted to understand what happened to President Emmanuel Macron to make him consider sending troops to Ukraine?
These ‘confidential defense reports’ explain the ‘panic’ at the Élysée palace.
When it comes to the perspective of sending troops to fight the Russian forces, they were incredibly blunt in their assessment.
“Several French soldiers, interviewed by Marianne, say they ‘fell out of the closet’. ‘We must make no mistake, facing the Russians, we are an army of cheerleaders!’, mocks a senior officer, convinced that ‘sending French troops’ to the Ukrainian front would simply be ‘not reasonable’.”
The greatest takeaway from the documents is that ‘a Ukrainian military victory now seems impossible’. The Russian forces are waging ‘a slow and long, high-intensity war based on the continued attrition of the Ukrainian army’.
The defense reports harshly criticize the ‘disastrous’ planning done by western military and Ukraine:
“‘The planners believed that as soon as the first Russian lines of defense were crossed, the entire front would collapse […] These fundamental preliminary phases were carried out without taking into account the moral strength of the enemy on the defensive’.
[…] These Ukrainian ‘Year II soldiers’ were launched to attack ‘a Russian fortification line which proved to be impregnable’. Without any air support, with Western equipment that is disparate and less efficient than the old Soviet equipment (‘obsolete, easy to maintain, and capable of being used in degraded mode’), the Ukrainian troops had no hope of breaking through. Let us add ‘Russian arch-domination in the field of electronic jamming penalizing, on the Ukrainian side, the use of drones and command systems’.”
Once they analyzed the situation militarily, the French military stated that ‘the Russian army is today the tactical and technical’ reference for thinking about and implementing the defensive mode’.
“The Russians also knew how to manage their reserve troops, to guarantee operational endurance.”
Long gone is the idea that the Russian army sends its troops to the slaughter without remorse.
The most serious error is to continue to seek ‘exclusively military solutions’ to stop hostilities.
The officers heard by Marianne know that it’s clear, given the forces present, that ‘Ukraine cannot win this war militarily’.
“Zelensky would need 35,000 men per month, he is not recruiting half of them, while Putin draws from a pool of 30.000 monthly volunteers.”
The failed 2023 offensive ‘tactically destroyed’ half of Kiev’s 12 combat brigades.
Furthermore, the risk of Russian breakthrough of the Ukrainian defensive lines is very real.
“Kiev had to abandon the town of Avdeevka, in the northern suburbs of Donetsk, which until then had acted as a fortified bastion. ‘It was both the heart and the symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the Russian-speaking Donbas […] Despite the emergency dispatch of an ‘elite’ brigade – the 3rd Azov air assault brigade – Kiev is not capable of locally re-establishing a sector of the front which is collapsing.”
Not only do the Western sources tend to ‘underestimate’ the Russians, but they are also followers of the practice of ‘Maskovkira’, ‘consisting of appearing weak when We are strong’.
“””French Foreign Legion down to 7k. Fine for Spec. Ops. Otherwise? Not so much.”””
The French Foreign Legion is not a Special Operations force.
Thank you for the post about the Foreign Legion.
There are indeed many Ukrainians in the French Foreign Legion.
Many Ukrainians are decedents of the Swedish Vikings. They know how to fight, when ever necessary. You would need about 10 Russian soldiers to take down a single French Legion guy.
The US Marines are good.
And let’s not forget the British Army Gurkhas. These guys are crazy good.
They were fantastic during the Falklands war.
And what about the Russian Spetsnaze? Well... Quite good actually.
But they suffered a 95% casualty in the beginning if the Ukraine War.
Russian politicians sent them as cannon fodder, instead of keeping them valuable reserves for special operations.
I despise the Kremlinist politicians for their stupidity and how they ravaged their own absolute best troops for nothing. They don’t know anything about how to conduct a war. They are just good at endlessly scarifying their own people for crazy causes. Sad.
At the start of the invasion, there were about 700 Ukrainians in the Legion’s ranks of about 9,000 but I would guess there are fewer now since anyone so inclined would probably have joined the Ukraine military which would have reduced these 2 years of FFL enlistments from Ukraine.
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