PARIS, July 4. /TASS/. French trainers have been instructed not to befriend the Ukrainian military during training, Le Figaro reported on Monday.
"We were instructed not to make contact with the Ukrainians," an officer who supervised one of the sessions told the French newspaper. This, he said, is to avoid any information leak: both the French and the Ukrainian military fear lest any detail is turned into intelligence for Russia, he explained.
However, the command of the French Armed Forces would also like "to protect French soldiers from the impact of war," Le Figaro added. "More than half of the Ukrainians trained and sent to the Bakhmut (the Ukrainian name for Artyomovsk - TASS) front, gave no sign of life afterwards," it quoted a French officer as saying. He commented on training given by a Baltic army. "We have seen cases of post-traumatic stress among trainers," he added.
In 2023, France expects to train 4,000 Ukrainian troops. The training that is being offered both on French soil and in Poland is part of the EU Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM Ukraine). Under the program, European countries are claimed to have already trained 20,000 Ukrainians and are planning to train 10,000 more before the end of this year.