TAPA, Estonia — For the past five years, French troops at a NATO military base here, nestled among pine forests, have been training for a conflict that seemed unlikely. But the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine has suddenly given a new raison d’etre to the 200 or so French infantrymen stationed in Tapa, a town about 60 miles from the Russian border.
By bringing the threat of large-scale fighting closer to home, the conflict in Ukraine has fueled France’s efforts to prepare for what General Thierry Burkhard, the French military chief of staff, calls “a high-intensity war.” He said those efforts included improving his country’s ability to rapidly deploy troops and defend itself against cyber and information warfare.
“The interest of European countries is to weaken Russia,” General Burkhard said in an interview with DailyExpertNews and Agence France-Presse news agency, during a trip to Estonia last week.
His words seemed to echo those of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, who last month said America’s goal was to see Russia so “weakened” that it would no longer have the power to control a neighboring state. to invade.
But in line with the efforts of President Emmanuel Macron of France to maintain an open diplomatic line with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, General Burkhard added that weakening Russia does not mean wiping it out, and that the West may need to cooperate with Russia. to build a future global “security architecture”.
General Burkhard said two months after the war started, there were already lessons to be learned for the French army, one of the strongest in the world, but whose recent combat experience has been limited to guerrilla warfare and terrorism in the Middle East and Africa.
In Tapa, General Burkhard met with the French 7th Battalion Chasseurs Alpins, or Alpine fighters, an elite mountain infantry unit rushed to NATO base in mid-March as part of the alliance’s rapid military buildup on the eastern flank. At the base, French troops train alongside British tank regiments, in terrain often snowy or swampy – a new reality for a battalion that until then had mainly deployed to the arid regions of former French colonies, including twice to the West African nation from Mali.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” General Burkhard said, “it’s not because we fight in Mali, and succeed there, that we know how to wage an intense war — it’s not the same.”
The French military commander said that by denying Putin the quick victory many analysts had initially expected, Ukraine’s strong defenses had “forced a pause in Russia’s long-term strategy” to destabilize the West and re-establish a Soviet-like sphere of influence. set in Eastern Europe. Europe.
“We should take advantage of this pause,” General Burkhard said, adding that European countries needed to untangle the “spider web” that Mr Putin had woven around them, some hooking on Russian gas and oil, as he met military threats and effective deployment. information warfare.
But General Burkhard said whatever the outcome of the war, “Russia will not disappear” and will have to be considered in future talks on European security.
In an interview, Lieutenant General Martin Herem, the commander of the Estonian Armed Forces, took a more hostile tone towards Russia, saying it must be evicted from Ukrainian territory because any success it achieves “will do enormous damage to the stability of our region.” cause. †
But as a sign that the war in Ukraine may have helped Western allies to overcome at least some differences, General Burkhard said he supported a stronger European presence in NATO, something Estonia has long asked for. The general downplayed fears that Macron’s calls to bolster Europe’s own defenses implied that he wanted to create a competitor for NATO’s presence on the continent.
General Burkhard said a lesson from the war in Ukraine was “the importance of strong morale”, comparing the dejection of Russian troops, which led some to surrender or sabotage vehicles, to the stubborn resistance of the Ukrainian army. . “Strong morale should be a constant concern for us,” he wrote in a letter to the military released last month.
General Burkhard also said that Russian forces were “stretched more than the Ukrainian defenses”, resulting in logistical problems and a lack of soldiers to control captured territory, hampering their advance.
In Estonia, French soldiers operate in a British-led NATO battle group alongside Estonian troops, and have participated in several training exercises with names such as ‘Bold Dragon’ and ‘Winter Camp’.
War between Russia and Ukraine: important developments
Captain Guillaume, who heads the French unit in Tapa and who could only be identified by his first name in accordance with French military rules, said the exercises were helpful in understanding how “in a symmetrical combat two armies of two different cultures can confront each other.” .”
But Michel Goya, a former French colonel and military historian, said such exercises do not disguise France’s greatest challenge today: being able to deploy troops quickly.
“The Russians are conducting large-scale operations and they don’t know how to do it anymore – and neither are we,” he said, adding that the French army could only quickly deploy six combat regiments today, compared to 120 in 1990.
“We’ve forgotten what it’s like to fight, what it’s like to be hit by artillery fire, what it’s like to take a lot of casualties at once,” said Mr Goya, who was deployed with UN troops in Sarajevo in 1993. . , when the city was besieged by the Bosnian Serb army. “We put ourselves in the shoes of the Ukrainians and see everything we miss.”
Unlike other European countries, France has refrained from sending large quantities of arms to Ukraine, an indication of its desire not to allow tensions to escalate, as well as its limited arms stocks and manufacturing capacity, Mr Goya said.
France said last week that it had so far sent military equipment worth 100 million euros or about 105 million dollars. That’s less than Estonia and Germany, which have offered arms worth $220 million and $140 million, respectively, according to a database compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank.
Whatever the outcome of the war, General Burkhard said Europe should make the most of Russia’s stumbling block in Ukraine to “reorganize itself and build its long-term strategy” against Mr Putin.
But countering Russia doesn’t mean stopping it, the general said. France has ensured that he continued to talk to Putin despite the war. “The long-term strategy cannot be ‘I will make Russia disappear,'” General Burkhard said. “It won’t go away.”
