Manon Fossat
modified to
09:48, March 02, 2022
On the seventh day of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, General Christophe Gomart was the guest of Europe Matin on Wednesday. As Putin’s troops continue their actions and attack Kharkiv, the country’s second city, he felt that the Russian soldiers must have been surprised to be so poorly received by the Ukrainian population.
After seven days of fighting, Russian airborne troops landed in Kharkiv overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, and fighting is raging in the country’s second city. Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 660,000 Ukrainians have fled their country. Invited to Europe Matin on Wednesday, General Christophe Gomart, who headed French military intelligence, returned to the Ukrainian patriotism observed since the start of the invasion, carried in particular by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Very close peoples”
“It is undoubtedly more complicated to motivate Russian soldiers than to motivate Ukrainian soldiers who are defending their land, their houses, their streets, their villages or their cities. While the Russians are ultimately seen as attackers and as the bad guys by the entire population. And they certainly did not expect that,” he said.
“Ukrainians and Russians are very close peoples. All Russian families have ties with Ukrainian families and vice versa. They are people who speak exactly the same language. Very often we spoke of two countries but of a single people , so it’s probably hard for the Russian soldiers to see that they’re not welcomed at all,” he continued. “And on the contrary, they are seen as formidable adversaries.”
According to the general, the morale of the Russian troops “does not seem to be at its highest”. “We have a number of testimonies – even if we have to be wary of it in such a war – which show that Russian soldiers wonder what they are doing there and thought they were welcomed as liberators, something that is not the case.”