Paris - Saba:
France has "paved the way" for Russian forces by preparing Ukrainian deserters, Russian Ambassador to Paris said on Saturday.
Sputnik quoted Alexei Meshkov as saying, commenting on statements about Paris' intention to train another brigade for the Ukrainian armed forces: "The road is paved... let them prepare other deserters."
Earlier, the French newspaper Midi Libre reported that Ukrainian authorities had launched an investigation into charges of "desertion" against members of the Anna Kievskaya Brigade, which was trained in France.
The newspaper reported, citing Ukrainian sources, that about 1,700 soldiers out of 2,300 soldiers trained in France fled quickly after being sent to the front.
Agence France-Presse also quoted the French General Staff as saying earlier that dozens of Ukrainian soldiers who were receiving training by the French army fled while they were on French territory during the training period.
On November 14, France completed training 2,300 Ukrainian soldiers from the 155th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The training included three infantry battalions, engineering and artillery formations, and air and ground surveillance and reconnaissance units. About 1,500 French soldiers participated in the training process.
At the end of November, Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law allowing deserters to return to service voluntarily until January 1, 2025, with the restoration of all their rights and salaries.
However, there were no soldiers who wanted to return to service, and on the contrary, statistics indicate an increase in the number of deserters.
According to the British newspaper "Financial Times", the number of deserters from the Ukrainian Armed Forces in ten months during 2024 almost doubled compared to the general statistics for 2022 and 2023, and in 2024 60,000 criminal cases were filed against them, and the highest rates of desertion were among infantry and assault brigades.
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