It used to be a point of pride for Western nations that their citizens were so eager to go play Rambo in Ukraine with dreams of 'smoking' Russians. Or at least they didn't seem too keen on stopping them. Now, they don't even want to admit they exist. 

Such patriots, fighting for nothing less than Western freedom! It all seemed like fun and games until the missiles started flying and they realized (too late, in some cases) that the Russian army isn't just a non-playable entity in a video game. 

Just this week, Russia's Defence Ministry said it had hit a nest of 60 foreign fighters in Kharkov — most of whom, it claims, were French. If true – although the French government denies that's the case – it would raise a lot of questions, like why are French nationals fighting Russia in Ukraine? Who are these people, exactly? Why the Gallic shrug from Paris over their presence in an armed conflict zone when the ubiquity of Western intelligence in Ukraine suggests that France should be well aware of what's happening?

The French government has already proven that it has a really good idea of what French citizens are doing in Ukraine. Last year, French domestic intelligence has said that of the 400 French fighters in Ukraine, about 30 are already known as neo-Nazis. Russia has even said that it's investigating alleged crimes committed by some of these French mercenaries. French National Assemblyman Frederic Mathieu of the left-wing France Insoumise party alerted the French interior minister last year to the threat of French citizens who head over to Ukraine to hang out with Ukrainian fighters, thinking that it's a neo-Nazi Disneyland, and then come back as a terrorist risk themselves. The head of the French domestic intelligence service (the DGSI) suggested the same in the French press in July 2023, citing the mercenaries' "neo-Nazi inspiration."