Briefly Noted: The French War On Russia
Those who follow the war on Russia will be aware that Russia appears to be actively targeting NATO personnel fighting in Ukraine, more actively than in the past. About a week ago Russia used missiles to destroy a supposedly abandoned hospital in Kharkov, claiming that it had killed 60—or possibly more—French military personnel. Russia designated these personnel as “mercenaries”, but the reality with regard to supposed “mercenaries”—especially in the current situation—is that these are mostly military personnel who possess special skills to operate advanced NATO weapon systems and surveillance systems. The French attempted to deny the Russian claims, but that is clearly no longer possible:
A list of French mercenaries who died in a hotel in Kharkov, Ukraine after Russia targeted it with a missile has emerged. This is only a part, there is also a second list. This is a huge number of French people who have died in just ONE attack so far. NATO is definitely with boots on the ground in Ukraine and in large numbers. http://t.me/megatron_ron
The Russian Foreign Ministry thereupon called in the French ambassador for a heart to heart talk. The ambassador was, unusually, kept for hours and was apparently 1) presented with incontrovertible evidence in Russian possession of what Frane is up to in Ukraine, and 2) warned about the consequences of French acts of war against Russia.
What is this about? It’s about Russia’s actions that have struck at France’s neocolonial empire in Africa:
The Cold War btw. Russia & France is heating up. FR is increasingly getting involved in the conflict in Ukraine, supplying UA with weapons [SCALP] & highly qualified mercenaries This is explained by the hostility that FR feels towards RU bcoz of the rivalry in Africa.
Russia has played a central role in undermining French influence in Africa through its support for new military governments in former French colonies. French commitment to the war effort in Ukraine is result of RU-FR strategic competition in Africa. https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/strike-ukraine-french-contractors-africa…
That linked article—Russian Missile Strike on French Contractor Base in Ukraine Highlights Heated Franco-Russian Cold War—provides a further overview of the role of NATO personnel in Ukraine. None of it is surprising, but it has become more and more important as NATO struggles to prevent a Ukraine military implosion:
The Russian Armed Forces on the evening of January 16 were reported to have launched a missile strike targeting the headquarters of predominantly French European foreign fighters in Ukraine. Russian sources subsequently reported that the personnel targeted were military contractors, and that the strike caused at least 80 casualties 60 or more of which were killed. Russian state media reported that these personnel were “highly trained specialists who work on specific weapons systems too complex for the average Ukrainian conscripts,” which “put some of the most lethal and long-range weapons in the Ukrainian arsenal out of service until more specialists are found” to replace them. These claims align with a strong consensus among analysts that in order to allow the Ukrainian Armed Forces to absorb very large quantities of complex Western weaponry, much of which takes several years of training to operate, contractors from across the Western world have played a significant role in operating this hardware. A key example has been the American MIM-104 Patriot air defence system, which Ukrainian personnel were considered unable to operate before 2024 at the earliest, but which began to operate in the country in early 2023. This was difficult to explain other than with the presence of foreign personnel.
…
As the United States has suspended further military assistance to Ukraine due to Republican opposition to further spending on the war effort, while Germany has struggled to gain domestic approval for the donation of new cruise missiles to the Ukrainian Air Force, France has played an increasingly prominent role in the conflict. This has included escalated transfers of SCALP cruise missiles and "several hundred" bombs which will be delivered in the coming week, with French President Emanuel Macron indicating that Paris could provide formal security guarantees to Kiev as the war effort looks increasingly unfavourable for Western interests. Russia has notably played a central role in undermining French influence its most critical foreign sphere, namely West and Central Africa, through its support for new military governments in former French colonies after a series of coups across the region. This has included not only an expansion of economic ties, but also support of arms, training and security through the presence of Russian contractors which has seriously limited France’s ability to assert its influence or forcefully restore Francophone governments in the region. With French ties to former colonies in Africa being of existential importance to the country’s economic health, an outsized French commitment to the war effort in Ukraine has been interpreted by a number of analysts in the context of the particularly poor relations Paris has with Moscow as a result of their strategic competition in Africa.
One wonders whether the increasingly hysterical Euro hype about the coming war with Russia is intended to gaslight the Western world, innoculate them against the reality that Russia is responding to Western aggression if Russia responds even more forcefully.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-12024-russian-gains-resume
Toward the end of this post there is a discussion of the the foreign "mercenaries"--really NATO personnel--including video presentations by a French journalist and a German journalist. The point is that there are clearly thousands of NATO soldiers operating a lot of the NATO weapons systems that require long training.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240118/scott-ritter-russia-wont-hesitate-to-eliminate-western-troops-in-ukraine-1116252636.html
It also raises the intriguing possibility that French troops could be directly involved in the Ukrainian conflict against Russia.
"At least some of these French-speaking individuals weren't mercenaries, but actually French serving military personnel, that is military personnel who worked for the French government, who were in Ukraine at the behest of their government. And now they're dead," Ritter said.
That apparent new Russian policy contrasts with previous leniency towards NATO military 'advisors' or other personnel in Ukraine, the expert argued, suggesting a paradigm shift to targeting all hostile forces in Ukraine.
"They have not been taken out in significant numbers, although with Russian intelligence being what it is, there is every likelihood that the Russians knew they were there and could have taken them out," Ritter said. “This shows that Russia has made a decision: everybody in Ukraine now is fair game”.
The broader implication is clearly that Russia is now in an "endgame" of annihilating of the Ukrainian armed forces.