About Sources & Methods Analyzing Ukraine

The question of French soldiers

How do you assess what is going on in the Ukraine war?  It is a non-trivial subject for a number of reasons.  

There are three "sides" to the conflict --Ukraine, Russia and NATO (including other NATO wannabes such as Moldova).  All of them produce propaganda and disinformation, sometimes blatant, other times subtle, even sophisticated.

Most news articles written on the war come out of these different camps and tend to tow the line of their respective governments.  While we in the west tend to look down our noses at Russian publications, our own performance (insert the name of your country here) is pretty poor.  Information told to the press, or leaked, often just regurgitates statements and information trying to support Ukraine in its war.

The Russians and Ukrainians also are speaking to their own people.  Both countries tightly control information when they can. Unfortunately, the rise of social media and independent or nearly-independent bloggers has made misrepresentation and exaggeration more difficult for governments.  These have been strengthened by photos and video.

The Ukrainian approach is to give exaggerated, sometimes false information on the results of battles.  Casualties are minimized, successes (which may or may not be real), amplified.

The Russians news way is a little different.  The Russian defense ministry provides a lot of detailed information on enemy losses, but rarely if ever reports  on any setbacks for the Russian army. (Anyway it is against Russian law to say bad things about the army.)  A key missing ingredient is the loss of Russian troops and equipment: Russia just does not report that information.

In fact, the only "objective" source is the occasional leak or analytical assessments done by professional organizations such as Rand Corporation. To this I would add the leak (if that is what it was) of a Pentagon assessment that compared Russian to Ukrainian casualties. That Defense Department paper validated a lot of what was reported in various blogs, mostly originating in Russia.

Any analyst trying to offer judgments on the progress of the war and its political, diplomatic, military and strategic implications needs to work through the information and to try and separate actual data from faked information. 

No one will get everything right, no matter how smart they are.  That is for a couple of reasons.  Some of the faked information is very well concocted, making it hard to find out if it is wrong information.  And some of the faked information comes with photos and videos that appear to be convincing (but sometimes are misrepresentations or even older scenes that are used to portray current developments).

If you do not follow social media, and you are not a competent intelligence agency with boots on the ground and electronic overhead surveillance capabilities, it is unlikely you can make any sense of the war.  Compounding that is the fact that governments routinely take action in secret, so there are "surprises" for sure.

This is by way of preface to my article about French troops in Ukraine.  Some have said I was incorrect and my sources suspect.  My sources (I will show them below) came from X (Twitter) and Telegram, not from mainstream media of Russia, Ukraine or NATO countries.  Some have called them "fake" but in my judgement they are not at all fake.

The background is this.  Emanuel Macron has been doing two things which, taken together, constitute a threat to send French troops into Ukraine.  The question is not whether that is his intention, but how he intends to carry out his threats.

First of all, Macron has kept lowering the bar on what it would take for French troops to join the war in Ukraine. 

Initially Macron said that French troops could help the Ukrainians by replacing troops in the western part of the country not directly engaged in combat.  This step would free up Ukrainians to fight the Russians.

The problem with the Macron deployment argument is that French soldiers have been killed in towns in towns near the combat line and not in the west of the country.  The latest news, albeit so far reported on a Telegram channel, is that some French "mercenaries" were killed in Chasiv Yar, a town to the west of Bakhmut that was a core staging area for Ukraine's army.  I will return to "who" these mercenaries are in a moment.

The second point is that it is now well known that the Third Brigade of the French Foreign Legion is being trained to intervene in Ukraine.  That brigade, according to reports in the French media, say that the Foreign Legion brigades will need some augmentation from the regular French army, mostly because Legionnaires are relatively lightly equipped expeditionary fighters and the war in Ukraine is more a heavy confrontation of main-line armies.

Next we come to what France is doing beyond inviting Ukraine to ask for French military help?  In turn this raises the question of "who" the French soldiers are who already are in Ukraine?

There is a so-called International Legion fighting on the Ukrainian side. (The Russians have also recruited some Syrians and others as well, but they have never been described as mercenaries.  When attached to Wagner, they are part of the Wagner force and get their supplies and marching orders from Russia's central command authorities.)  As far as I have been able to find out, International Legion members wear Ukrainian uniforms but with national flags or patches indicating where they come from.  Technically, International Legion members are volunteers, making them mercenaries.

I believe this is largely a deception.  Intelligence agencies on both sides of the war have been openly recruiting skilled soldiers, mainly retired, to fight in Ukraine.  One presumes money is involved.

In addition, specialists to operate modern western weapons, aka air defenses or rocket launchers, are in Ukraine from NATO countries.  Are they mercenaries or contractors?  Is there any difference?

There has been a lot of comment and many denials about the presence of foreign soldiers especially when it is implied they are connected to their home governments. 

For example, “On the evening of 16 January, the armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a precision strike on a temporary deployment point of foreign militants in the city of Kharkiv, the core of which were French mercenaries," al Jazeera reported.  The Russians called in the French ambassador to complain.  In reply the French said they "fully comply" with international law and have "no mercenaries" in Ukraine.

In the context of Macron's threats the deployment of 100 trained soldiers, under whatever pretext or no pretext whatsoever, is consistent with France's open policy and, perhaps, its covert operations.  

It is understandable the French government does not want to trigger a forceful Russian response or even a larger conflict, despite the rhetoric and regardless of training for an operation in Ukraine.  Other European leaders --Germany, Italy, even the UK, are aghast at the danger that the Ukraine war can turn into a bigger war in Europe.  Even the Russians clearly do not want that to happen.

Anyone who follows the escalation in Ukraine, the delivery of massive amounts of ammunition and equipment, some of its top of the line and sophisticated, expands the risk that the war could quickly mutate into something far worse for peace in Europe and beyond.  Macron's reckless comments, and perhaps his actions too, run that risk up the flagpole.

I am certainly no prophet or sage and I could be wrong.  Frankly, I hope I am.

Addendum

Here is the source for my original article.

https://twitter.com/SputnikInt/status/1779082975293886822