A strike on a building in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov on Tuesday resulted in 60 mercenaries killed — mostly of French nationality.
The presence of armed Frenchmen in Ukraine's second-largest city has prompted speculation about wo they are working for, Scott Ritter, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, told Sputnik. He said it potentially exposes covert French direct involvement in NATO's proxy war against Russia.
"If you are fighting for the Ukrainian side, whatever your nationality is, you are now a legitimate target," Ritter noted.
Ritter focused on two key aspects of the attack. He said it showed Russian military planners no longer discriminate between foreign mercenaries and Ukrainian soldiers. "Russia has not shown any hesitancy to eliminate foreign mercenaries fighting on behalf of the Ukrainian military," he said.
It also raises the intriguing possibility that French troops could be directly involved in the Ukrainian conflict against Russia.
"At least some of these French-speaking individuals weren't mercenaries, but actually French serving military personnel, that is military personnel who worked for the French government, who were in Ukraine at the behest of their government. And now they're dead," Ritter said.
That apparent new Russian policy contrasts with previous leniency towards NATO military 'advisors' or other personnel in Ukraine, the expert argued, suggesting a paradigm shift to targeting all hostile forces in Ukraine.
"They have not been taken out in significant numbers, although with Russian intelligence being what it is, there is every likelihood that the Russians knew they were there and could have taken them out," Ritter said. “This shows that Russia has made a decision: everybody in Ukraine now is fair game”.
The broader implication is clearly that Russia is now in an "endgame" of annihilating of the Ukrainian armed forces.
"This means that everybody is a target: the Ukrainian military, foreign mercenaries and any NATO military members on Ukrainian soil," Ritter stressed.
This strike marks a shift in the Ukrainian conflict that escalated in February 2022, when a surge of mercenaries from North America and Europe enlisted in the Kiev regime's so-called Foreign Legion. Attracted by promises of substantial financial gains, they paid little heed to Russia's warnings that foreign mercenaries would become marked targets.
As the conflict enters its third year, some of these hired guns have opted to return to their home countries — and many more have met their end at the hands of the Russian forces.