Both the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, have a strong penchant for PR stunts that often get in the way of the very objectives they set for themselves.
Desperate for some relevance in the war, since both his domestic and foreign agendas were a complete shitshow, Macron decided to bankroll the whole new 155th mechanized brigade, projected to become the ‘elite’.
France allocated almost 1 billion euros for its NATO-grade training and top Western equipment.
But as soon as the brigade found itself at the front, a mass exodus began with more than 1,700 people fleeing before firing a single shot, mostly from the infantry and tank battalions.
Even during the training in France, more than 50 members of the brigade disappeared.
The Telegraph reported:
“By the time it entered battle for the first time, at least 1,700 of its troops went absent without leave at numerous points. Some 500 soldiers were still missing, it was reported as recently as November.”
The real exodus came back in Ukraine, as the brigade was being deployed to Pokrovsk, the key logistics hub in the defense of Donetsk region.
As the brigade entered the battle, it suffered heavy losses, including some of its tanks and armored vehicles.
“It prompted the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigations to investigate the seemingly shambolic formation of the 155th. The brigade, also known as Anne of Kyiv, was meant to have more than 5,800 troops and be equipped with some of the best equipment available, including Leopard tanks and French Caesar 155mm howitzers.”
Zelensky and Macron announced the $900 million project to great fanfare at an event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing, in June of last year.
“Yuriy Butusov, a Ukrainian war correspondent, wrote: ‘This is indeed a crime, but the crime of not soldiers and officers – but the crime of the leaders of the supreme commander-in-chief, the Ministry of Defense and the general staff, who continue to waste their lives and public funds on new projects, instead of strengthening experienced and combat-capable brigades’.”
When the 155th was deployed to Pokrovsk, it did not even have any drones or electronic warfare jammers by the state.
“Bohdan Krotevych, the chief of staff of Ukraine’s Azov Brigade, said: ‘Can it be idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with such equipment, having incomplete existing ones?’
Mr. Butusov added: ‘The brigade’s servicemen became hostages of Zelensky’s PR project, which the authorities made no effort to actually implement competently’.”
The brigade has now been disbanded, with its troops assigned to real battle-hardened brigades that are already defending Pokrovsk.
Read more:
Mainstream Media Finally Reports That Ukraine’s Only Option Is Making ‘Territorial Concessions’ to Russia To End the War – Without NATO Invitation
