MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. France has once again shown that it is a party to the Ukrainian conflict as reports indicate that French ex-officers took part in planning the attack on the Kursk Region, Christel Nehan, a French war correspondent working in Donbass and the editor-in-chief of the International Reporters agency, told TASS.
Earlier, Kharkov region administration official Yevgeny Lisnyak said that former military parachute regiment officer Franck Michel Mickael Corte, who is currently serving in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, was involved in planning the Ukrainian attack on the Kursk Region.
"Personally, I am not surprised that a former French officer was part of the team that planned the attack on the Kursk Region. 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," Nehan said.
She added that France strategically calls its military specialists in Ukraine mercenaries to avoid responsibility.
Earlier, Lisnyak specified that Franck Michel Mickael Corte is also involved in committing war crimes in the Kharkov Region. According to him, the task of the regiment, where the officer served, was to conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines. In addition, three other French citizens who took part in raids near the Russian border in the Kursk Region and were involved in committing war crimes in the Kharkov Region were identified: Jean Baptiste Besson, Sydney Ballester and Jonathan Bouderlique, the official added. All four are suspected of mercenarism (Article 359 of the Russian Criminal Code).
Deputy Chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ Main Military-Political Department, Akhmat Special Forces Commander Major General Apty Alaudinov told TASS earlier that active military units of NATO countries were among the mercenaries in the Kursk area.