The French president has reportedly ordered a contingent of 2000 soldiers to prepare to help Kiev, according to Russian intelligence
French President Emmanuel Macron is preparing to intervene militarily in Ukraine, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed. In a statement published on Monday, the agency’s press department suggested that he desperately wants to leave his mark on history.
”Having failed as a politician and despaired of ever pulling the country out of the long social and economic crisis, he does not give up the hope to go down in history as a military leader,” the SVR claimed, adding that Macron “dreams of a military intervention in Ukraine” and is “known for fantasizing about Napoleon’s ‘laurels’.”
According to the SVR, the French General Staff has reportedly already been instructed to form a contingent of up to 2,000 troops “for deployment in Ukraine.” The core of this force is expected to be made up of troops from the French Foreign Legion, mainly recruited from Latin American countries.
The SVR stated that Legion personnel are already deployed in regions of Poland bordering Ukraine, where they are undergoing “intensive joint combat training” and receiving weapons and equipment. Their transfer to central Ukraine has reportedly been scheduled in the near future.
The agency also said that France has already begun preparing for casualties, with “hundreds of additional hospital beds” reportedly being created to accommodate wounded soldiers, while French medics are said to be receiving field training to handle combat injuries.
Paris intends to describe the deployment as limited to instructors for the Ukrainian army in the event it becomes public, the SVR stated.
The intelligence service went on to compare Macron’s ambitions to those of historical figures who fought Russia in the past, such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Swedish King Charles XII.
It added that while the French leader dreams of mirroring those leaders’ accomplishments, he appears to have forgotten that their campaigns ended in defeat.
“History teaches nothing, it only punishes for lessons not learnt,” the SVR statement concluded, citing Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky.
