the French army prepares for all terrains and closely monitors the Ukrainian theater

At the Sissonne military training camp, French soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Regiment are preparing to be sent to any terrain. Urban areas, use of drones, they are particularly looking at what is happening in Ukraine.

“Nothing should be excluded”, declared Emmanuel Macron on February 26, in Paris. The president has said publicly that he has not ruled out sending ground troops to Ukraine. This is not news, but the Army is preparing to be thrown into all areas and is closely monitoring the Ukrainian theater.

When the head of state talks about ground troops, eyes inevitably turn to the 92^e Clermont-Ferrand infantry regiment, which mobilized around 200 men and women for this training. Units immersed for five days in these reconstructed towns or villages on the 6,000 hectares of the Urban Action Training Center (CENZUB) in Sissonne, in Aisne. “It works a bit like a laser gamedescribes Lieutenant Valentin, the combat section leader. All our weapons are equipped with laser pointers and there are receivers on our vests.”

Drones, urban areas… The specificities of Ukraine

“Of course we are particularly looking at what is happening in Ukraine, explains Lieutenant Valentin. We see that the fighting actually takes place in the cities and so we have been training to work in urban areas for a while now.”, he continues. For the military, it is therefore a question of evolving under enemy fire. For training, they fire blanks. The soldiers progress through small buildings, a supermarket, hangars, alleys or go from house to house like here in Beauséjour, a combat village in the heart of the training camp.

“Among the specificities of the Ukrainian theater, there is of course the massification of drones”explains Commander Charles, instructor at CENZUB (Cbetween training for actions in urban areas). He recognizes, too, that they are inspired by what they observe “on the Ukrainian theater”. The massive use of drones involves “the need to disperse so as not to be vulnerable, precisely to artillery fire which benefits from the vision of these means of observation, of these drones which are multiplying”, he explains.

These soldiers do not leave the field, they are there 24 hours a day, they sleep here, they eat here. Discomfort is part of the training, as Commander Charles explains: “The goal is also to reproduce this fatigue, this stress. You can see that they are in conditions of cold, wind, mud”.

The 92nd regiment expected in Romania

The 92^e infantry regiment is training because, soon, its soldiers will reinforce the eastern flank of NATO, in Romania, a country bordering Ukraine. These infantrymen are expected at the Cincu base, in Romania. This is the Aigle mission, a multinational battalion of which France is a framework nation, a preventive deployment carried out on February 28, 2022 by NATO, after the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

“We will be ready, whatever mission we are given.”

Colonel Stéphane Talleu

franceinfo

“We were already coming here to the Sissonne camp, to train in local combat, but rather on counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism type missions. These are the types of missions that we have carried out in recent years, whether in Afghanistan or Mali”explains Colonel Stéphane Talleu who commands the 92nd infantry regiment.

“And there, we come back to a so-called high-intensity scenario”, he explains. “Instead of being faced with an asymmetrical enemy, that is to say with limited means, we are facing a more conventional enemy who has means which are close to ours. This is exactly what we can see today in Ukraine”continues Colonel Talleu.