PARIS, March 19. /TASS/. The French military should refuse any orders from the country's leadership to send a contingent to Ukraine, while servicemen already stationed there should be immediately returned home, Florian Philippot, the leader of The Patriots party in France told TASS in comments on data from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) on the French military in Ukraine.
"The military should refuse [to follow orders]. We are not talking about some ordinary mobilization of forces, but about the possible outbreak of World War III, when one nuclear-armed country sends its troops against another nuclear power in a conflict that is not ours at all. We could join a terrible chain of events," he said.
The Russian side has information that France is preparing to send a military contingent of 2,000 troops to Ukraine, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin said earlier.
"The current leadership of the country (France - TASS) does not care about the deaths of ordinary French people or about the concerns of the generals. According to information coming to the Russian SVR, a contingent to be sent to Ukraine is already being prepared. Initially, it will include around 2,000 troops," he said.
According to the foreign intelligence chief, the French Army is "visibly concerned" over the growing number of French citizens killed in Ukraine. "As the French Ministry of Defense unofficially admits, the country has not suffered similar losses abroad since the Algerian war in the second half of the 20th century," Naryshkin underscored.
"As they say in the Elysee Palace, the number of French killed ‘has already crossed a psychologically significant threshold’. The disclosure of such sensitive data could provoke citizens to protest, especially against the background of farmers' massive anti-government campaigns across the country," Naryshkin said.
After a conference on Ukraine in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron did not unequivocally rule out potential sending Western land troops to the zone of the special military operation in Ukraine. He also vowed that Western states would "do what is needed" to prevent Russia’s victory in this conflict.