Yevgeny Lisnyak, Russia’s deputy chief for defense and security of the Kharkov Region’s civil-military administration, has identified a French officer as being involved in the planning for the Ukrainian Armed Forces incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. “The ex-major of the 8th parachute and paratrooper regiment of the tactical unit of the French land forces Corte Franck Michel Michael, who is currently a member of the Foreign Legion [of Ukraine’s Armed Forces] and is complicit in committing war crimes in the Kharkov Region, took part in the planning of the incursion into the Kursk Region,” Lisnyak told reporters in Lugansk on Sept. 5, reported TASS.
According to Lisnyak, the objective of the regiment where the officer was serving was to carry out sabotage operations deep in the enemy’s rear. “Three more citizens of the French Republic who took part in the raids near Russia’s border in the Kursk Region and were complicit in committing war crimes in the Kharkov Region have also been identified as Jean-Baptiste Besson, Sydney Ballester and Jonathan Bouderlique,” Lisnyak added.
Christel Nehan, a French war correspondent working in Donbass and the editor-in-chief of the International Reporters agency, told TASS that she was not surprised that French officers were involved in the planning of the Kursk operation. “It’s already obvious that there are a lot of NATO officers or former officers in Ukraine, not only as instructors, not only to use Western weapons, but also as advisors on strategy and tactics. We see that Ukraine’s tactics in the Kursk Region are NATO tactics, so it’s clearly evident that it was NATO officers who planned this attack, not Ukrainian officers. We’re seeing more and more that NATO troops or former troops are playing a very important role in all this fighting on the side of Ukraine. When France, the French authorities, say that they are not a party to the conflict, you can’t help but laugh. Of course they are a party to the conflict.”
Ms. Nehan added that France strategically calls its military specialists in Ukraine “mercenaries” to avoid responsibility.