Emmanuel Macron on tour in Romania and Moldova, two neighboring countries of Ukraine at war. Friday evening, the French president visited the soldiers deployed as part of a NATO mission on a base in southern Romania, near the port of Constantza.
With our special correspondent in Constantza, Anastasia Becchio
In a hangar at the Mihail Kogalniceanu base, Emmanuel Macron shakes hands and talks for a few moments with soldiers from the Aigle mission. The battalion, which has 800 men, 500 French and 300 Belgian, was deployed in emergency only a few days after the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine on February 24. ” What France has built through you is a unique commitment, constitutive of our credibility and our protection. By deploying so quickly, so clearly, so strongly, you have contributed to consolidating these partnerships and building what is the longest and most precious thing to build between armies: trust. »
Work on chains of command
Confidence, cohesion, things on which we had to work for units that are certainly all part of NATO, but which have different sensitivities, confided Colonel Vincent Minguet at the head of the battalion: “ We all have more or less the same procedures in Western armies, but we need to train. The Russians skated because the chain of command was broken. So we really practiced on that. We challenged ourselves and tried to improve in that area. »
On the base, earthworks are in progress. The battalion will soon number 1,000 men and will be equipped with heavier equipment: “ in a sustainable way, we will need to protect ourselves, to deter, to be present “warned Emmanuel Macron.
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