{"id":47460,"date":"2024-05-04T11:27:58","date_gmt":"2024-05-04T19:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=47460"},"modified":"2024-05-04T11:27:58","modified_gmt":"2024-05-04T19:27:58","slug":"french-troops-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/04\/french-troops-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"French Troops in Ukraine?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While Paris continues to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/france\/20240502-macron-doesn-t-rule-out-troops-for-ukraine-if-russia-breaks-front-lines\">flirt with the possibility<\/a> of a troop deployment in Ukraine, recent reports that French Foreign Legion soldiers have already arrived on the battlefield may not be what they seem.<\/p>\n<p>The claims appear to have originated with a Russian war blogger known as \u2018Military Chronicle,\u2019 who runs a popular Telegram channel and is active elsewhere on social media. In an <a href=\"https:\/\/vk.com\/militarychronicles?w=wall-219928383_29475\">April 12 post<\/a> on VK, the channel alleged that the \u201cfirst units of the French Foreign Legion\u201d had been stationed in the city of Slavyansk, but cited no sources to support the assertion.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The post went on to claim that the first batch of 100 French troops would be sourced from the Foreign Legion\u2019s 3rd Infantry Regiment, and serve alongside fighters with Ukraine\u2019s 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade.<\/p>\n<p>Though Military Chronicle reportedly published the same information on Telegram \u2013 as <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SputnikInt\/status\/1779082975293886822\">noted<\/a> by Sputnik \u2013 the post no longer appears on the channel.<\/p>\n<p>More <a href=\"https:\/\/asiatimes.com\/2024\/05\/france-sends-combat-troops-to-ukraine-battlefront\/\">recent reports<\/a> have echoed identical details regarding an alleged deployment of 100 Foreign Legion troops to Slavyansk, but also reference no sources.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the lack of credible sourcing for this particular claim, French officials have <a href=\"https:\/\/libertarianinstitute.org\/news\/french-defense-chief-wont-rule-out-ukraine-deployment\/\">insisted<\/a> such a decision should not be ruled out, with President Emmanuel Macron again raising the issue just earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the Russians were to break through the front lines, if there were a Ukrainian request \u2013 which is not the case today \u2013 we would legitimately have to ask ourselves this question\u201d of whether to send troops, he told the Economist in an <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/WhI67\">interview<\/a> published on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p><em>Will Porter is assistant news editor at the Libertarian Institute and a regular contributor at Antiwar.com. Find more of his work at Consortium News and ZeroHedge.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While Paris continues to flirt with the possibility of a troop deployment in Ukraine, recent reports that French Foreign Legion soldiers have already arrived on the battlefield may not be what they seem. The claims appear to have originated with a Russian war blogger known as \u2018Military Chronicle,\u2019 who runs a popular Telegram channel and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-47460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47463,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47460\/revisions\/47463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47460"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=47460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}