French on the front next to the Russians? Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, April 30 during an intervention in Moscow that French citizens were fighting for Russia as part of the war in Ukraine.
“There are people who have shared and who still share our principles and values. They are by our side. Today, the French fight with our soldiers during a special military operation,” said the Russian president, without supporting his comments.
“They baptized their unit ‘Normandy-Niemen’, as their grandparents and grandfather did,” he said.
If Vladimir Putin does not give more details about these combatants, the Russian state television channel Ria evokes a French soldier with the indicative “father” and another “Gauthier”. These two volunteers would be former officers of the French army who went to fight in Russia in this unit presented by Moscow as particularly active in the use of combat drones against kyiv’s men.
Possible cases of volunteers present on the Russian side
General Jérôme Pellistrandi, defense consultant of BFMTV, recalls that there is no “absolute element” that certifies how many foreign combatants are present on the Russian side in the war in Ukraine or what his marital status is.
However, the presence of French volunteers on the front with Putin’s men seems “possible.” “There are French pro-ruse people,” recalls our consultant.
However, these men are necessarily voluntary individuals, according to him, that is, to have chosen individually to go to the front and not on behalf of the French army. “They are not soldiers (…), even if there can be former soldiers,” said our consultant. In short, even if they are not quantifiable.
A reference to a “glorious past” for the Russians
The declaration of Vladimir Putin about the Normandy-Name unit is also part of the usual discourse of the Russian president who states that the war in Ukraine is a simple “special military operation” that should allow “disorder” to its neighbor.
The strong man of Kremlin resumes his narration with his population and “refers to a very glorious past,” explains Jérôme Pellistrandi, when Russia won against Germany during World War II.
This statement does not occur by chance, while Russia is in full preparations for the commemorations of May 9, celebrating the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany in 1945, scheduled for next Friday.
This sequence, during which a great military parade in the Red Square will take place in Moscow, will be an opportunity for Russia to reaffirm the power of his army, while Donald Trump made Moscow responsible for the beginning of the war in Ukraine for the first time.
Create a “confusion” among Kyiv’s allies
Vladimir Putin’s words also have an objective of “instrumentalization,” says our consultant. “Its objective is to create the division” within the western allies of Ukraine, but also a form of “confusion,” Jérôme Pellistrandi judges.
Because, in fact, the “Normandy-Name” unit exists within the French army. This air hunting group was launched during World War II in 1942 to fight along with the Soviet forces against Nazi Germany that then invaded the USSR.
The name of the regiment refers significantly to the Niemen, this river that crosses the current Belarus, Lithuania and part of Russia, and which was crossed by the members of the unit during a battle in 1944. Strengthened by more than 200 battles officially won, the unit receives honors at the end of the war, decorated in particular with the legonion of honor in France and always benefits from a positive image of the same image.
A difficult peace agreement between Kyiv and Moscow
“It is part of a logic of confrontation” against the western allies of kyiv and fed by Vladimir Putin, he estimates that Jérôme Pellistrandi, while in particular France attributes for the first time at the end of April to the Russian military intelligence of the responsibility of the cyberattacs against the French interests, including the pirate Macron in 2017.
In addition, discussions with the end of peace between Moscow and kyiv have been skating for two months, Volodymyr Zelensky always demands a “total and unconditional” struggle and is not satisfied with the short truces proposed by the strong man of the Kremlin, currently perceived by Ukraine’s allies as the one that blocks the peace agreement.
Vladimir Putin proposed to Ukraine a three -day truce from May 8 to 10 to, according to him, to prove the Kyiv agreement to make peace. Volodymyr Zelensky responded on Sunday, indicating that “he did not believe” that Russia was going to respect this truce.
Source: BFM TV
