General Eric Vido, who heads the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM) just last summer, is set to step down immediately, a military source told AFP on condition of anonymity. The source confirmed a report on the L’Opinion website citing an internal investigation by the Ministry of Defense that criticized “insufficient information” and “failure to address issues”. Another source told AFP that there had been rumors within the army about the general’s departure in recent days, with the possibility that he had been offered another position, although this did not happen in the end. In the months leading up to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, France’s estimates ran counter to gloomy predictions by allies, including the United States and Britain, that a serious military strike was imminent. Top officials in Emmanuel Macron’s government have insisted that there was no proposal for a full-scale invasion, and the French president kept diplomacy until the last minute, meeting Putin in person in the Kremlin and trying to hold a summit with US President Joe Biden. . The issue is particularly sensitive as Macron has largely avoided campaigning for the April presidential election to focus on tackling the war in order to fill his image as a global politician. In early March, France’s top general, Thierry Burkhard, admitted in an interview with Le Monde that there were differences in analysis between France and the United States over what would happen in Ukraine. “The Americans said the Russians were going to attack and they were right,” said Burkhard, who has won over fans during the conflict for his candid assessments of the situation. “Our services probably thought that invading Ukraine would have a monstrous cost [for Russia] and that the Russians had other options “to achieve their goals, he said. In fact, the United States had high-quality information about Russian preparations and made the unprecedented decision, several weeks before the invasion, to release the information in an effort to put pressure on Putin. Alexandre Papaemmanuel, a professor at the Institute for Political Studies (IEP) in Paris and an intelligence expert, said Washington had used a new tactic to use information to try to put pressure on a foreign leader. He said France was well aware that its own intelligence had failed in this case, although he added that DRM should not be the only security service responsible. Le Monde reported that the DRM had often been sidelined by France’s powerful foreign intelligence service, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). But Papaemmanuel said: “The warning is for the whole [intelligence] community. “You have to be effective and deal with all threats.” A military source said the DRM’s main role was to provide information for operations, not intentions. Its services had concluded that Russia “had the means to invade Ukraine and what happened showed that it was right,” the source said. Le Monde said the war in Ukraine had revealed differences between the intelligence services of France and those of the United Kingdom and the United States, which have larger budgets and more room for maneuver in terms of surveillance legislation. “Even though this reliance on Anglo-Saxon information has been around for a long time, especially in the fight against terrorism and in space, the war in Ukraine has shed light on it in a big way,” the newspaper wrote.
