French-Speaking Mercenaries Fighting for Ukraine Exposed by Donbass Fighter From France
© Photo François Mauld d'Aymée
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In a targeted attack in Kharkov last week, the Russian military murdered over 60 mercenaries, the most of whom were French, and injured over 20 more. The attack coincides with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, preparing to increase military support for the Kiev administration.
French-speaking mercenaries fighting in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine are a potpourri of fascist radicals seeking to replay the Second World War on the Eastern Front, Francois Mauld d’Aymee, a French officer-turned Donbass People’s Militia volunteer, has told Sputnik.
“Representatives of the French mercenary movement vary greatly. French-speaking Canadian mercenaries are worth mentioning. They, by and large, come from radical nationalist circles, and see the conflict as an opportunity to realize their pathetic dreams of replaying the Great Patriotic War. In other words, they’re openly Nazis, Hitlerites, and freely organize the dispatch of new militants from training centers which they own in Paris and Lyon. They have connections with CasaPound in Italy [a radical Italian neo-fascist movement, ed.], and their ideological line is always the same as that of Azov,” d’Aymee said, referring to the Ukrainian openly neo-Nazi volunteer brigade-turned regiment.
The volunteer, who arrived in the Donbass in 2015, and fought in the special military operation during the Battle for Mariupol, characterized French-speaking fighters fighting on Ukraine’s side as a collection of “clowns, sports enthusiasts [and] drug addicts,” some of them veterans of French and NATO military campaigns in Afghanistan and Africa.
“A very small number of them actually fight because their level of Ukrainian or Russian is too basic. That’s why they’re mostly kept in reserve. Most of those on the frontline have been wounded or killed,” d’Aymee said.
While the remaining mercs “still pose a threat to us,” this “intellectually-weak material does not have the opportunity to organize into any large structures, and in general their rise in the ranks among the enemy has not been visible. They’re essentially ‘dumb meat’ whose mission is to die like idiots. I know some of them personally; they barely know how to competently express any opinion even in French,” d’Aymee summed up.
The Russian military carried out a precision strike against a mercenary staging area in Kharkov, northeastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing over 60 fighters – most of them French nationals, and wounding over 20 others. The strike serves as additional proof of France’s deep, and often underreported, involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, not just from 2022, but from 2014 on.
France and Canada have not barred their citizens from taking part in the Ukrainian conflict, with the two countries sending billions of dollars in military and other assistance to Kiev from 2014 on. French military aid included some €1.6 billion from 2014-2020 alone, with French officials calculating support topping €3.2 billion late last year.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to send additional bombs and cruise missiles to Ukraine earlier this week, and create a new "war economy" framework for France's military-industrial complex for aid to Kiev amid falling fiscal commitments from Washington.
