France is racing to build temporary barracks to host a substantial military presence planned for this year’s Olympic Games in Paris.
The army camp, reportedly the largest on French soil since World War II, will host 4,500 troops of the 18,000 tapped to help provide security for the massive sporting event. The military personnel will be working alongside 45,000 members of the country’s domestic security forces and up to 22,000 private guards slated to be on hand.
Although the installation is comparable in size to those built during wartime, it will be stocked with amenities far beyond what French soldiers enjoyed during the 1940s.
“In 1945 we were building camps of tents,” said Commissar General Philippe Pourque to French media. “In 2024 it's a permanent structure with facilities that were unimaginable 50 years ago: WiFi, air conditioning.”
The last French camp of such size was established in the former French colony of Mali, where the country unsuccessfully battled jihadist militants.
Mali’s government forced French and US troops out of the African nation earlier this year, instead turning to Russian security forces with experience countering extremists in Central Asia and Syria. Recent polling shows Russia enjoys a median approval rating of over 75% in the Sahel region.
France is focused on responding to the threat of terrorism at this year’s Olympic Games with the danger posed by radical Ukrainian neo-Nazis on the rise after a plot linked to the country’s Azov Battalion was foiled in Italy. Last month it emerged that Ukrainian fighters flaunting neo-Nazi symbols had undergone military training in France.
Germany quietly deported neo-Nazi Ukrainians earlier this year after their presence in the country created a scandal. Evidence suggests that fascist extremism is alive and well in Ukraine, however, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken dining in a Kiev pizza parlor last month that’s notorious for displaying Third Reich iconography.