The Director of French military intelligence, General Éric Vidaud, will be dismissed from his post for discounting the possibility of Russia invading Ukraine, French media reported on Thursday.
Quoting an internal source at the Ministry of the Armed Forces, local media outlet l’Opinionsaid General Vidaud was dismissed on grounds of “insufficient briefings” and a “lack of mastery of subjects”.
France’s Chief of Defense Staff, Thierry Burkhard, acknowledged in an interview with Le Monde that the dismissal came when French intelligence services – including Vidaud – realised it had made an erroneous analysis of the Russian threat in Ukraine, which ran counter to the US assessment.
