MOSCOW, May 28. /TASS/. More than 1,000 French mercenaries are currently present in Donbass, a military expert from the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), Colonel Vitaly Kiselev said.
"We already have data that more than 1,000 French mercenaries, legionnaires are in Donbass. This is true. As far as I know, there are also prisoners. There will be more to come," he said on the Solovyov Live TV channel.
According to Kiselev, special units of a number of European countries are now present in the special military operation zone.
"I think America is pushing through the situation to come in under the guise of instructors for training. <...> these are Romanian instructors, these are Polish instructors, Estonian instructors, instructors of Baltic countries. They will enter the training grounds in western Ukraine to train personnel," Kiselev added.
On May 27, Ukrainian armed forces Commander-in-Chief Alexander Sirsky said that he had signed an agreement that would allow French instructors to visit training centers in the country.
On May 6, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in which it called the claims made by French President Emmanuel Macron about the possibility of sending French forces and contingents of other NATO countries to Ukraine irresponsible. It noted that the Western mass media had published information about the presence of a number of mercenaries from the French Foreign Legion in the Kiev-controlled territory. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on May 8 that French military personnel would inevitably become targets of the Russian Armed Forces if they appeared in the conflict zone in Ukraine.