Roger that!
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.
How does this drag us into a fight with Russia? France isn’t NATO, this is no different than these US bombing Gaddafi.. Just because a member does something doesn’t mean it’s the whole alliance doing it..
That was my point. IN fact, I was wondering if they have any rubber trees in Ukraine. In Vietnam, we had to reimburse the French $ 1 million for each rubber tree we blew up accidentally or on purpose. My tongue in cheek comment was to make folks aware that is exactly how we were dragged into Vietnam. I am a witness to it.
FTA: Macron has to hope that his troop deployments to Ukraine won’t trigger a Russian embargo on sales to France.
He is not very bright is he?
“””””In Vietnam, we had to reimburse the French $ 1 million for each rubber tree we blew up accidentally or on purpose.”””””
No we didn’t, look into it.
So much is wrong from this article, Frenchmen can join the Legion, and the minimum enlistment is 5 years, not 3, the five year minimum is why I did not return my enlistment form to them.
“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.”
France says it can commit 20,000 troops within 30 days to a threat. The French army says it counts 121,000 soldiers and can call up 24,000 reservists.
“France is not deploying its home army and, besides the small number of officers, the men sent are not French citizens.”
The Legion is part of the Army and has many Frenchmen.
I was in the Navy but had a tank commander tell me that story. I don’t trust the reporting of it by anyone, whether true or not. Do you have a source that you are referring to, or did you have personal knowledge of it?
This claim might be more accurate, we did pay for various damages, including rubber trees, and tried not to damage them.
“The National Coordinators of Vietnam Veterans Against the War once wrote: “We supposedly valued human life while our enemy did not. Yet we paid the owners of the Michelin plantations $600 for each rubber tree we damaged, while the family of a slain Vietnamese child got no more than $120 in payout for a life.”
https://saigoneer.com/saigon-culture/17206-the-harrowing-history-of-vietnam-s-rubber-plantations
It is possible that my tank commander exaggerated, but he stuck by his story. I am sure the amount increased the older he got, like most fish stories. I was Navy Air, so I never got in the bush (thank God).
Most people who know about the war or read about it know that we paid for damaged rubber trees and tried to minimize the damage to those plantations with artillery and tanks and bunkers, but the figure used was way out of place.
A friend would make USMC HMM trips to a Michelin rubber plantation in South Vietnam. “We had to reimburse the French $ 1 million for each rubber tree we blew up,” was originally a story told (and retold), in order to discourage the damaging of property owned by Michelin.
That company tried to maintain an amazing, incongruous neutrality in the face of the French defeat, 10+ years earlier - the U.S.A. somehow taking the blame instead of the French, with France being the place of future peace negotiations.
My friend left South Vietnam in 1969 after two tours. He was discouraged by ROE re both Michelin and Shell Oil Co. I can find an ROE re rubber plantation operations at:
But I am not sure of, when the story became the rule.
It looks like you're right. I searched and saw nothing on this, other than Macron saying he hasn't ruled out sending troops to Ukraine.
In DS, they were a flank unit to my brother’s (101st AASLT). They were generally better equipped, supported and at least as well trained as the US infantry. He was surprised (in the 1990 era) to find a number of Americans in the ranks.
The FFL allows French leadership to execute whatever insane Frog foreign policy they like without endangering the lives (and votes) of his Metropolitan Army...
(WWIII)
yep
Roger that!
“France joining ‘41’s anti-Saddam coalition with ONE soldier who never left Paris.”
France had a Division on line for Desert Storm, right next to the 82nd Abn Division.
I think fake news. Link in article is dead and nothing on other news sources
yefragetuwrabrumuy, post on the thread, I don’t know what that PM meant.
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