Florence Parley, Minister of the Armed Forces, was the guest of 8:30 a.m. franceinfo Friday February 18. She mentioned in particular the withdrawal of the French army from Mali and the crisis in Ukraine. She answered questions from Lorrain Sénéchal and Neila Latrous.
Withdrawal from Mali: the army will “get into working order”
Florence Parly explained that the French army was going to “put in working order to achieve” French military withdrawal from Mali “within this time” four to six months set by Emmanuel Macron. The operation “will start these days”.
For the Minister of the Armed Forces, this titanic logistical challenge, in a degraded security context, can be met in time by the French forces. “The President of the Republic, as early as June of last year, asked us to reconfigure our system in Mali, so we have already closed three bases that we had in northern Mali”she explained.
Ukraine: “Today, the priority is diplomacy”
In the Ukrainian crisis, the Minister for the Armed Forces believes that“today, the priority is diplomacy but we are not naive and we are preparing”. For Florence Parly “NATO’s response is a response that consists first of all in ensuring the protection of countries [qui en sont membres] who are closest to this zone of tension in which we are”she detailed.
“The very job of the military is to prepare and deal with all eventualities, so the work is done so that this protection can be ensured”underlined Florence Parly. France has “a force of several hundred men in Estonia” that the president said he was ready to redeploy, recalled the Minister of the Armed Forces.
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