MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/. French President Emmanuel Macron's speculations about the possibility of dispatching a French military contingent to Ukraine are a "diversion" designed to push domestic problems into the background, an independent military correspondent from France working in Donbass has said. Christelle Nahan is the editor-in-chief of the International Reporters agency and a graduate of the New Media Workshop program.

Macron did not explicitly rule out the possibility of sending Western ground forces into the area of Russia’s special military operation following a conference on Ukraine in Paris on February 26.

On March 19, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin said that France was already preparing a military contingent to be sent to Ukraine, which would initially amount to about 2,000 soldiers.

Nahan believes that Macron announced the possible dispatch of military personnel even though very many people in France are against helping Ukraine in order to divert attention away from protests about the country’s internal problems.

"It's just a diversion, an attempt to get people in France to stop talking about domestic problems. He even tried to argue that if some hospitals in France do not operate properly, it was Russia's fault. As we can see, there are attempts to blame Russia for pretty much everything," Nahan noted.

She added that this is probably also being done "to justify the presence of French soldiers who are already in Ukraine under the guise of mercenaries or volunteers."

"Many experts say - and we do see this - that the contingent that Macron wants to send - 2,000 soldiers - is very small. It will not change anything on the ground. This is a miniscule one-twentieth of the faction the Ukrainian army lost in Artyomovsk alone. It makes absolutely no sense to send such a small contingent," Nahan added.

French mercenaries in Ukraine

According to Naryshkin, French military personnel have been unofficially present in Ukraine for quite a while already. Some have already been killed or wounded.

Naryshkin pointed out that France unofficially recognized the deaths of its own servicemen. The French army has not experienced such a level of losses since the Algerian War of 1954-1962. The Elysee Palace, as Naryshkin noted, also believes that the number of dead Frenchmen has exceeded a psychologically significant threshold, and now there is a question about how to bury the dead and treat the wounded in secret so as not to spark a public outcry.

After that, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces made a statement on the social network X that what Naryshkin said did not correspond to reality.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on March 14, the Russian forces killed 147 out of the 356 French mercenaries who arrived in Ukraine during the special military operation. In all, 5,926 mercenaries from various countries were eliminated.