Former CIA officer Larry Johnson claims that the French mercenaries killed by Russian servicemen on 17 January were professional military men.
The Russian Defence Ministry said on 17 January that Russian troops destroyed a temporary deployment point of foreign militants in Kharkiv with a precision strike, the basis of which were French mercenaries. As a result of the attack, 60 mercenaries were eliminated and another 20 soldiers were taken to medical centres with injuries of varying severity.
“The difference between the mercenaries eliminated in Kharkiv is that those guys who arrived two years ago, most of them were those who played video games and said, ‘Eh, now I’d like to go and play a soldier.’ They had no military experience or training and were more of a burden than helping in any way. I assume that the mercenaries killed in Kharkiv were former members of the French Foreign Legion, which means they had experience and combat skills,” Larry Johnson said in an interview with the YouTube channel Dialogue works.
He believes that the unusually large presence of mercenaries in Ukraine may indicate that Western countries are thus trying to ensure that foreign weapons are operational, as Ukrainians themselves cannot use them effectively.
We shall remind you that earlier Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that Ukraine’s conflict with Russia was “gradually deflating” and that the situation on the battlefield was changing. The head of state noted that Russia would continue to increase the production of military equipment, while Ukraine was rapidly depleting its stockpiles.