General Fabien Mandon urged France to understand losses might be necessary to protect national security, warning of a potential confrontatio
...confrontation with Russia by 2030. France's Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin backed top military officer General Fabien Mandon, who has called on the country to show "fortitude" and "accept losing our children" in order to "protect what we are," warning that Russia is preparing for confrontation with Western nations by 2030. General Mandon told the Congress of French Mayors on Tuesday that France risks failure if it is not prepared to accept casualties and economic pain from prioritising defence production. "If our country flinches because it is not prepared to accept losing its children, because we have to say things, suffering economically because priorities will go to defence production, then we are at risk," the chief of defence staff said. "We have all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the Moscow regime from trying its luck further afield. What we don't have is the fortitude to accept the pain of protecting what we are. "The comments follow General Mandon's warning to MPs in October that the French army was planning for a "clash with Moscow in three or four years' time. "Vautrin defended Mandon on Thursday, saying the general was "fully entitled to express his views on the threats that continue to grow." "His comments, taken out of context for political purposes, are the military language of a leader who, every day, knows that young soldiers are risking their lives for the nation," she wrote on X. "Our responsibility is clear: to avoid any confrontation but to prepare for it, and to consolidate the spirit of defence, that collective moral strength without which no nation could stand up to the test."
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