Franck, with a generous beard and a sarcastic smile on his lips, assures him: “Fortunately, these are not very serious deaths since I came back to life,” jokes this fighter from the Ukrainian International Legion interviewed by AFP.
The strong 50-year-old, who agreed to testify on Skype with his face uncovered - but prefers to withhold his surname - from the front line where he is deployed, is one of the alleged French "mercenaries" killed according to Moscow in a strike on the night of January 16 to 17 in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
France denounces false Russian information
The Russian Ministry of Defense, in a vast communications operation, claimed to have on this occasion “eliminated” around sixty fighters “most of whom were French citizens” and injured 20 others.
Paris, for its part, assures that it has “identified a coordinated maneuver by Russia” to disseminate false information involving France, at a time when the latter is increasing its arms promises to Ukraine.
Several lists, including one supposed to reveal the identity of around thirty “dead French mercenaries”, were massively relayed by Telegram channels and pro-Kremlin activists.
There is mention of Franck, who in the fall of 2022, had already been declared killed by Russian media, in a video seen by AFP.
“I lost my Go-pro camera in a trench in the Zaporizhzhia region (South), he says.
They had used my images, mixed with those of corpses, to say that my entire group was dead.
» AFP was also able to find and question two other French people appearing on these lists.
VIDEO.
“It’s bogus Russian storytelling”: a so-called “French mercenary” killed in Ukraine testifies
All three denounce “phony propaganda”, intended to “discredit” their commitment as volunteers alongside the Ukrainian armed forces.
These former French soldiers, none of whom were in Kharkiv at the time of the attack, forcefully refute the term “mercenary”.
Béranger Minaud, who testifies under his real name and whom AFP met on January 25 in Aix-les-Bains, at the foot of the French Alps, says he left Ukraine in September 2023 after being wounded in combat.
“For me, it is completely impossible for 50 French fighters to find themselves in the same place at the same time in Ukraine,” says this 45-year-old former delivery driver, who first got involved in humanitarian work before taking weapons to “stop the massacres” of civilians.
“These lists are nonsense: there are other guys on them that I know, they were in Ukraine in the past but they returned to France for a while,” adds the man who calls himself Sly, 43 years.
Contacted via WhatsApp, he said he was currently fighting “in southern Ukraine”.
Lists “generated by Chat GPT”?
According to Franck, who made contacts in Kharkiv from Donbass where he works as a "sniper", "the bombing that night did not hit any military buildings, it hit civilian infrastructures, there were 19 civilians injured, but that’s all.”
A report close to that given by the local authorities, who reported on January 17 that 17 civilians were injured.
Some of the identities presented are also false, French diplomatic and military sources point out, one of them affirming that certain lists “generated by Chat GPT” produced fanciful names.
Like this “Air Jordan”, born in 1986, which would have died.
“Based on verified elements on the presence of French people in Ukraine, (…) they mix the true and the false,” she said.
Xavier Tytelman, consultant and editor-in-chief of the magazine Air et Cosmos, in regular contact with the French of the Ukrainian International Legion, claims to have contacted a dozen of them named on these lists, “all alive and well”.
France does not deny the presence of certain of its citizens in the ranks of the Ukrainian army, but rejects the Russian implication that it is involved in their recruitment.
Also read “A missile passed through me”: at the bedside of Max, French fighter injured in Ukraine
The word “mercenary” chosen by Moscow is not insignificant.
Prohibited by French law, mercenarism, or the act of fighting for remuneration abroad, is punishable by 5 years of imprisonment.
This term is also the one used by France to denounce the activities of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, accused for years by Paris of predation and war crimes in Africa.
From the start of the war, in February 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on foreign volunteers to go to his country to join the “International Legion” to fight the Russians.
Modeled on the Foreign Legion
“Mercenaries, Nazis… That too is part of the misinformation spread by the Russians!
» enrages Sly, integrated into an infantry battalion of the regular army.
“We all came to defend a different cause here.
Some wanted action, adrenaline, others came for humanitarian or political reasons, but if we were there for the money it would be known.
»
Under a formal contract with the Ukrainian army, foreign fighters have a military booklet stipulating their name, their unit and the weapons provided to them.
“In fact, it looks a bit like the Foreign Legion in France,” says Franck, who, surrounded by fighters from “all nationalities in the world,” has been fighting with his Ukrainian brothers in arms for almost two years.
In fact, finding himself at the heart of “Russian propaganda”, in his words, hardly disturbs him.
“I take full responsibility for what I do.
»