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.
May the cluster munitions of the Russians be upon them.
Vietnam invites France to remember Dien Bien Phu defeat after 70 years
You need an air force for those.
DeGaulle may very well have saved France from Bolshevism in 1945.
A lot of people are not aware that right after the liberation of Paris, the Communists were trying to eliminate their rivals through bogus show trials, and trying to label their enemies as German collaborators. DeGaulle put a right stop to that.
FFL is 9000 people and only 20% are French. They won’t face domestic pressure from funerals.
France surrendered to Hitler early in WW2.
The French were slaughtered at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.
Get rid of that idiot Macron and put Marine LePen in there. That would solve a host of problems in France including the Muslim one.
You need an air force for those.
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They are using MiG-19s now and the newly-arrived F-16s will be pitching in, if they have not already.
Then, slowly but surely, your best friends will be pushed back.
The FFL is exceptional light infantry. The problem is, they are light infantry.
I don’t believe you can cite a single instance of the FFL “dropping their rifles” and running from any fight. They may all die in battle, but I wouldn’t anticipate anyone running from the Foreign Legion except its enemies.
yes and yes NATO was already involved, so yes.
Even so, the NATurd pilots flying the "Ukrainian" F-16s will come up on the "training accident" death lists quite often...
“The US worked hard for years to achieve war between Russia and Ukraine...”
Russia invaded Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine but it’s the US’s fault?
FYSA:
I don’t entertain KGB/GRU trolls or their gullible Forum dupes. Slaves and demoralized sycophants are no compatriots of mine.
Putin isn’t invading Biden’s space, he’s invading Ukraine. None of Biden’s ppl or houses have been destroyed. Millions of Ukrainians’ have.
You got tricked out of your morality with a simple confidence trick KGB’s been using on territories and peoples for over a century! Get lost. You are a weak minded, psychologically damaged person. You are a man without morals or a country.
Just what does Macron have to gain by this?
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The little man Macron is upset over Russia pushing France out of Africa. Much written about this on French news…..little coverage in the US MSN ( another Russian WIN).
“ How Moscow chased France out of Africa….PARIS — The French flag was lowered for the last time in the Bila Zagré military camp in Burkina Faso on Sunday, marking the end of 13 years of a presence by French armed forces in the West African country.
France’s withdrawal from Burkina Faso comes at a time when you’re less likely to see the French tricolore in the capital Ouagadougou than the Russian red, white and blue, marking a rapid and stunning loss of influence for the former colonial power…..
The withdrawal from Burkina Faso * is the third setback for French President Emmanuel Macron* who promised a new approach to Africa when he came to power in 2017, one based on a “partnership of equals.”
In recent months, France has also had to leave Mali and Central African Republic, raising fears of a domino effect across the continent as Macron winds down his country’s decade-long Barkhane operation to fight against jihadists in the Sahel…..”
France and the US is angry African nations are aligning with Russia and China.
More: another Russia win.
“Putin says France resents Russia for ‘stepping on its tail’ in Africa
Vladimir Putin said Emmanuel Macron’s vocal opposition to the war in Ukraine was an ‘emotional’ reaction because of certain French-speaking African countries increasingly turning toward Russia…”
US and western hegemony is dying….China/ Russia is turning the tables through TRADE, not war, are you listening Joe.
By the way, the US just handed over it’s base to the Russians in Niger…..
https://theduran.locals.com/index.php
…..the US war cheerleaders aren’t liking this….losing western Africa’s huge uranium and resources markets to Russia…..wake up folks….senile Joe is destroying the US with his sanctions and wars.
Almost comical…..except for the fact the US is heading into “ irrelevance”.
“but French soldiers are damn good.”
Yes, but they aren’t sending French soldiers.
“Probably the best in Europe by far.”
Almost every European nation, even Italy, could make this claim.
And this: “The British fled the battlefield.”
What would you have had them do? Stay in the trap and surrender?
Francophone Africa is in the process of becoming less Francophone or completely NOT Francophone. The French are very proud of their language and are humiliated when its influence withers away.
The French withdrawal ( expulsion) is secondary, the US being expelled from Niger and Chad is noteworthy. Ironic, you can pull up pictures of RUSSIAN soldiers now inhabiting the US built base in Niger….another mini Afghanistan debacle….
…of course little is being reported by western MSM about another senile Joe failure.
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