2024-01-19 09:23:20
President Emmanuel Macron presents his best wishes to the French armies this Friday at the Cherbourg naval base (Manche). Marked by their hasty departure from the Sahel, they are also faced with a multiplicity of challenges: Ukraine and the war economy, the Middle East but also the Paris Olympic Games. During his speech, scheduled for 3:15 p.m., the Head of State intends in particular to “reaffirm the principles which guide France’s support for Ukraine”.
Paris, criticized abroad for the weakness of its support, increased its announcements of military aid to Kiev this week: around forty long-range Scalp missiles first, around fifty AASM bombs (modular air-ground weapons) per month for a year thereafter, a ramp-up in the production of 155 mm shells and the financing of twelve additional Caesar cannons. Emmanuel Macron also plans to go to Ukraine in February, for the second time since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
France is “in the process of finalizing an important security agreement” with Ukraine of the type of that concluded on January 12 between the United Kingdom and Ukraine over ten years, the head of state indicated on Tuesday during a ‘a press conference.
Visits and meetings with young people from the universal national service
In the port of Cherbourg, the President of the Republic will visit in the morning the Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie, mobilized by the order of two patrol boats within the framework of the 2024-2030 military programming law, a historic increase of 40% compared to the previous one. It was presented by Emmanuel Macron during his greetings to the armies last year at the Mont-de-Marsan air base (Landes).
Emmanuel Macron had already gone to Cherbourg in 2019 to officially launch the Suffren, the first in a series of six new nuclear attack submarines (SNA), more discreet and more heavily armed, considered as symbols of the strategic independence of France.
The president will then meet on Friday with young people from the department who have completed or are starting their universal national service (SNU), which he wishes to generalize in second grade in line with the “rearmament” of society mentioned Tuesday in his wishes to the French.
International tensions
The last French soldiers left Niger on December 22, ending ten years of anti-jihadist operation in the Sahel, after being pushed out in Mali and Burkina Faso by hostile juntas. Since then, the armies, regularly called upon to “transform”, have been waiting for prospects to reorient their missions in Africa but also towards other regions: the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, the Arab-Persian Gulf or the East of the Europe.
With the war between Israel and Hamas, which set the Middle East ablaze, a helicopter carrier, the Dixmude, was reconditioned into a military hospital. Anchored in Egyptian waters, he treated “more than a thousand” Gazan civilians injured by Israeli bombings on Gaza, according to Emmanuel Macron. The French Navy also distinguished itself on December 9 by firing missiles for the first time in “self-defense” in the Red Sea in the face of attacks by Yemeni Houthi rebels who claim to be acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
The armies will also be in great demand in 2024 for the Olympic Games which will mobilize at least 15,000 soldiers this summer. They are looking for a solution to face retention and recruitment difficulties, notably a gap of around 2,000 people in the Army.
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