Several dozen Ukrainian soldiers have deserted while training in France, a French army official told AFP on Monday.
“There have been a certain number of desertions, but they remain very marginal given the volume of people who have undergone training,” a French army official told AFP.
“They were in French barracks, they had the right to go out.”
According to the French army official, the Ukrainian soldiers who were trained in France were subject to a disciplinary regime “imposed by the Ukrainian command.”
“We don’t criminalize desertion in France”, the official said.
“If someone deserted, a French prosecutor had no authority to arrest that individual. And the right granted to the Ukrainian authorities on French soil is just a disciplinary right.”
The French army trained on French territory 2,300 soldiers from a brigade named “Anne of Kyiv” after a Kyiv-born princess who married French King Henri I in the 11th century.
Most of the soldiers were conscripts with no combat experience. They were accompanied by 300 Ukrainian supervisors.
The other 2,200 soldiers in the brigade were trained in Ukraine.
Earlier Monday, Ukraine’s land forces commander admitted there were “problems” with the army unit after reports that many of its soldiers had deserted.
The unit was one of several formed last year as Ukraine sought to boost preparations for possible new Russian offensives.
“Yes, there are problems, we are aware of them,” Land Forces Commander Mykhailo Drapaty said of the Anne of Kyiv unit, the informal name for the 155th Mechanized Brigade, in сomments to media including AFP.
Prominent Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov wrote in December that 1,700 soldiers had fled the brigade without going into combat, and that 50 had escaped while training in France.
Asked about Butusov’s report, Drapaty said: “I will not refute it.”
He said “a number of the facts that were presented did take place”, while “perhaps not on the scale and scope that was presented.”
“I don’t really see what could be described as an abuse of power,” said the French army official.
“In any case, nothing has come to light about the Ukrainians being stationed in France or what happened during these training sessions.”
He insisted that the training had been in line with the Ukrainians’ wishes, in terms of “equipment” and “training time.”