“It’s totally my war.” Max, a French citizen committed to the Ukrainian army, returned on Tuesday for BFMTV about the liberation of the city of Kherson, in which he participated, involved in the 131st intelligence battalion of the Ukrainian army.
This eastern Ukrainian city, which Moscow had designated as the capital of the occupied region of the same name, was finally liberated from Russian soldiers on Friday, November 11, before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise visit the next day.
“Thousands” of mines
A victorious symbol of the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in the east of the country since late summer, the recapture of this city was made possible thanks to the withdrawal of forces from Moscow, overwhelmed by the Ukrainian advance.
“We were deployed on both fronts. (…) There were thousands of mines, every 10 meters. The Russians expected us to attack with armored vehicles… Which was the case in certain axes, but we also used a lot of infantry, and we it went relatively well,” Max explained to BFMTV.
“The Russians were coming out, so there weren’t any big fights in the area where I was,” he explained.
Little “collateral damage”
Following the Russian occupation of the city, the worst was feared for the fate of some 200,000 Khersonians. Many feared that the disastrous scenario of Mariupol would be repeated, where Moscow had repeatedly targeted the population in the first part of its offensive, in a maternity hospital and a theater.
But with a weakened Russian army and at times discouraged by the scant territorial gains made in nine months of conflict, the picture was different in Kherson. “The closer we get to the city, the better, because the fighting was not huge. (…) The Ukrainian artillery was able to prevent all collateral damage,” Max said.
He also spoke of a completely different scenario near what constituted the front line: “There is a demarcation line, where fierce artillery fighting has been going on for months. The villages are devastated.”
And while civilians were largely spared in Kherson, Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that “all crucial infrastructure” in the city had been destroyed.
“At first it was a disaster”
The testimony of Max, who had already pledged himself alongside Kurdish forces in Syria to fight against Daesh, confirms the change in dynamics observed on the ground, with a Ukrainian army now taking the lead in the fighting, initially pushing the Russians.
“At the beginning, when I arrived, it was a mess, panic. Two weeks had passed since the conflict began. It was very hard,” admitted the Frenchman.
“But now things have evolved, there is more coordination, the tactics have changed…”, he explained, acknowledging the importance of the Caesar cannons delivered by France, “which allow you to go far” behind the enemy lines.
Encouraged by the recent Ukrainian victories, Max does not plan to return to France anytime soon: “Everything is going well, morale is there, I am in an international team that is very solid, our missions are going well.”
“It is totally my war, to support the freedom of the Ukrainian people. It is normal to show international solidarity: no, Ukraine is not Russian and I support its right to exist. So there is also a history of defense of Europe, I find it. normal to be in solidarity with them”, he estimated this Wednesday.
Source: BFM TV
