“It’s a small earthquake in the world of French defense”, announces the Italian daily The Republic. General Éric Vidaud, head of military intelligence, was dismissed from his post, in the middle of a war in Ukraine which he is accused of not having been able to foresee. According to an internal source at the Ministry of Defense quoted by L’Opinion, the general would be forced out of office just seven months after his appointment to “lack of mastery of subjects” and “briefings insuffisants”.
During the month of February, a few days before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, “France has consistently played down the imminence of a large-scale attack, explains the British daily The Telegraph, in complete opposition to the gloomy predictions of allies, notably the United States and the United Kingdom.” General Vidaud was also on an ejection seat because his service had failed to anticipate “the torpedoing of the contract on the submarines” by Australia, in September 2021.
“Deep distrust” of the American secret service
The vanguard specifies from Spain that no French specialist in Russia was able to foresee the invasion. “Some then made their mea culpa” : considering such an action quite “unreasonable”, they thought Vladimir Putin was more realistic than he was.
“General Vidaud therefore becomes, beyond his errors of analysis, a scapegoat who is made to pay for the lack of general lucidity.”
Perhaps this error in French intelligence is attributable to the “deep mistrust” which has existed in France towards the American secret services since 2003, when the latter transmitted false information on Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”. A few days before the Russian invasion, the Élysée thus expressed its perplexity at the concerns “Anglo-Saxon”, adding that Germany also felt that the tone “alarmist” of the United States was excessive, adds the Telegraph.
“At the beginning of February, a French officer explained to us: ‘We have the same information [que les Britanniques et les Américains]but we do not interpret them in the same way’”, adds the British daily The Times.
The Republic also consider that in France “Military intelligence suffers from a lack of resources and a compartmentalized organization which does not facilitate the circulation of information”. A change in internal operation is also underway to avoid such analysis errors. This will have been costly for Emmanuel Macron, very involved in recent months in the dialogue with Vladimir Putin, but without tangible results.