(14 Nov 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Eastern France (exact location not given) – 13 November 2024
1. French military officer overseeing training of Ukrainian troops
2. Troops running in exercises
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Col. Paul, French officer involved in the training of Ukrainian troops:
++PART COVERED BY SHOTS 4 & 5++
“They have improved a lot. It’s quite impressive, the speed with which they have improved. Now they are able to fight, they are able to maneuver. They are able to use the different specialists and to use the different equipment they will have on the battlefield. It is training and equipment. So both training and equipment in order to provide a whole combat force, trained and equipped. And that’s why all the equipment with which they have trained during this time, these two months, they will have the same kind of equipment when they are in Ukraine and when they are on the battlefield. They will have the same APCs, the armored personnel carriers. They will have the same tanks. They will have the same anti-tank missiles.”
4. Various of soldiers training
5. Various of soldier in trench
6. SOUNDBITE (French) Col. Alban, French officer involved in the training of Ukrainian troops:
++PART COVERED BY SHOTS 7++
“We, the French army, have experience of what we call ‘Exterior Operations’ that we’ve carried out – in the former Yugoslavia, in Africa, in Afghanistan. We have this experience, experience of combat but in the context of expeditionary forces, ‘Exterior Operations’ in our jargon. So we have that experience. But we don’t have experience of equal combat, of war between two armies, equipped with modern material. We are rediscovering that with them.”
7. Various of military vehicles
STORYLINE:
A French military task force with a festive name — “Champagne” — is wrapping up a mission that’s no party: Training a whole new brigade of several thousand Ukrainian troops who will be joining the fight against Russia’s invasion armed with France-supplied tanks, artillery canons and other heavy weaponry.
The approaching return to Ukraine of the “Anne of Kyiv” brigade, after more than two months of intense military training in eastern and southern France, comes at another critical juncture in the almost three-year war.
Russian forces are driving westward in an effort to capture all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. They’ve been bolstered by up to 12,000 North Korean troops that have been deployed to Russia’s Kursk border region to help beat back Ukrainian forces there, according to U.S., South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence assessments.
The reelection of Donald Trump is also keeping Ukraine and its allies guessing about the impact he’ll have as U.S. president on the war’s future trajectory, following his campaign pledges to swiftly end the fighting and suggestions that Kyiv should cede territory to Moscow in return for peace.
When deployed, the French-trained and equipped brigade named after a Kyiv princess who became a queen of France could prove to be a formidable force on the battlefields. It will eventually be made up of 4,500 troops, formed of infantry battalions, plus engineers, artillery teams and other specialists, French authorities have previously said.
The more than 2,000 soldiers who have been training in France are being put through final paces before their return to Ukraine.
The French military dedicated around 1,500 of its own soldiers to the “Champagne” task force that has been teaching the Ukrainians how to fight effectively together and how to use and maintain their France-supplied weaponry.
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