"I wouldn't do that, if I were you!"
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.
Yeah, it was a disappointing film.
Supposedly there's a five hour director's cut that will be coming to streaming soon. But will it be five hours of mostly boring like the theatrical release was?
I expected more of Ridley Scott. But, I dunno. He's 86 now. Maybe he's lost his touch?
Do you want World War III?
Because this is how you get World War III.
Seriously, have they surrendered yet?
They’re gonna get their asses kicked, hard.
Can’t hide NATO involvement now.
I think it’s a mistake for the filthy commie, Macron, to get involved, but the frogs can do whatever they want. And if Paris gets nuked, it will eliminate far more muzzies than Charles Martell ever dreamed.
“ Somehow, I think the traditional ‘Olympic truce’ will not be observed. I also would not be surprised to see “something” happen in Paris.itself, aka 1972 in Munich.”
The Russians aren’t terrorists. However, if you mean a false flag event, you have a point. The Ukrainians and the CIA have been conducting terrorist events all along.
Also deployed:
the highly precise French gliding bombs AASM-250 Hammer.
Hey, France occupied Vietnam. Didn’t work out very well.
I think it’s a mistake for the filthy commie, Macron, to get involved, but the frogs can do whatever they want. And if Paris gets nuked, it will eliminate far more muzzies than Charles Martell ever dreamed.
FRANCE IS IN NATO.
Omg, at least google something before you post it.
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.
If this doesn’t cause the Russians to tuck tail and surrender then nothing will.
Should be some good deals soon on French rifles. Only dropped once...
When will Russia stop its provocation of China?
Must China invade Siberia to protect the rights of its people and restore territorial integrity?
Russia will not stop its military provocations until all its neighbors are at war with it.
200 fried Frog Legs coming right up!
“FRANCE IS IN NATO.”
France is in trouble.
Yes, France is in NATO. They kicked NATO out of France for basing, but they are very much members. And it’s very uneducated to call the French soldiers cowards. Their government has its issues, but French soldiers are damn good. Probably the best in Europe by far. In World War I they had far more deaths than the British, in World War II they suffered about the same amount of casualties as we did in Vietnam in the six week battle for France. The British fled the battlefield. In Singapore the British surrendered to a Japanese force 1/3 its size .
The French are definitely not cowards. But in this case they are dumbasses, as they have been many other times. In this case is a classic example of the lunacy of the French government.
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you!"
Just what does Macron have to gain by this?
They are just ‘advisors’, like what they sent to Vietnam...think nothing of it.
“It is not business to resort to force, and yet not resort to enough force to win the fight.”
What is France thinking?
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