A second Frenchman killed in the fighting

Second French fighter to die in the war in Ukraine. The death was announced on Tuesday by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Quai d’Orsay confirmed information from RTL on Monday.

“We have learned the sad news of this death,” the ministry said in a statement. “We extend our condolences to his family, with whom the services concerned (…) are in contact”.

“He succumbed to his injuries on June 25 in the Kharkiv region. He was 20 years old and had joined the international legion on March 1, said RTL. Seriously injured, in a coma, Adrien D. was being treated in a field hospital in the Kharkiv region, in northeastern Ukraine.

A first victim buried last June

The ministry had indicated at the beginning of June that a first French fighter who left as a “volunteer” had been killed “in combat”.

The International Defense Legion of Ukraine, the official organization of foreign volunteer fighters, had also mentioned his death alongside a Dutchman, an Australian and a German without specifying the date or the circumstances of their death.

RTL designates this first victim as “Wilfried Blériot, killed on June 1 and whose funeral took place in France on June 30”. The radio affirms that there would be approximately fifty Frenchmen who are currently fighting in Ukraine.

“7,000 foreign mercenaries”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the formation of the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine at the start of the war and Ukrainian authorities soon after said they had received around 20,000 applications.

The conflict is also said to have attracted a significant number of volunteer fighters from Georgia, a former Soviet republic that experienced a blitzkrieg with Russia in 2008 that led to Moscow’s recognition of two pro-Russian separatist territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. South.

In mid-June, the Russian army said that just under 7,000 “foreign mercenaries” from 64 countries had arrived in Ukraine since the start of the conflict and that nearly 2,000 of them had been killed. The Russian ministry asserted, without it being possible to verify it, that Poland was the “absolute leader” in Europe in terms of fighters coming to Ukraine, followed by Romania and Great Britain.