A Frenchman who went to fight alongside Ukrainian soldiers against Russia jumped on a mine in late November in the Donbass (East) and is now awaiting his repatriation, organized from the Quai d’Orsay, AFP learned from the person concerned and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. “I was wounded on November 27 in a forest, as our battalion began to enter the Lugansk region, northeast of Svatove”, in eastern Ukraine, where the fight against Russian forces is raging, Maxime Bronchain, The 32-year-old, currently hospitalized in a military hospital in the capital, he told AFP by telephone.
“I jumped on a mine, I’m seriously injured in my left foot. An American who was with me jumped on a mine then a second while he was coming to help me. He died during the evacuation”, explains the Frenchman, who was part of a reconnaissance unit of around twenty foreign fighters, “including 5 French”, within the International Legion.
He has had 5 operations since the injury and has refused amputation but now fears losing his foot. In contact with the French embassy in Ukraine, he is now awaiting repatriation to France. “There are high risks of infection, and the Ukrainians lack morphine”, worried his brother Florent, contacted by AFP.
“The French embassy in Ukraine, in liaison with the crisis and support center, provides the necessary assistance to our compatriot, as we do for all French people in difficulty abroad,” the French Foreign Ministry commented on Monday , assuring that “given his situation, our compatriot will be transported out of Ukraine with a view to being evacuated to France”.
The Quai d’Orsay “wants to recall on this occasion the risks associated with traveling to Ukraine, which is classified in the red zone. Any journey, whatever its nature, is formally discouraged”, he adds in a message addressed to AFP.
Employed in the restaurant sector in eastern France, Maxime Bronchain decided to leave for Ukraine in May, “to answer the call of President (Volodymyr) Zelensky”, who, as soon as the Russian invasion of his country In late February, he openly called on foreigners to join an “international legion” to defend Ukraine, he says.
Military for a year in the French army when he was 18, “I wanted to be useful,” he testifies. “People here welcome us as liberators, they take us in their arms.”
Father of a child who remained in France, Maxime intends to marry a Ukrainian from Odessa, known in the country at war.
