Joint exercise of France and England was ridiculed

The part of the Orion23 war exercise, the second phase of which was launched in France on February 25 and carried out with the participation of NATO allies, in the city center was mocked on social media.

Videos posted on Twitter showed around 300 French and British soldiers recreating battle scenes between pedestrians and vehicle crossings in the southern city of Cahors. It is striking that the residents of the city pass by the cannons of the soldiers, who with their uniforms advance in the middle of the street, opening positions and firing blanks in their hands, the cannons that supposedly extended the enemy.

In the images on social networks, many jokes were made about a vehicle that wanted to continue its route because the green light was on, waiting behind the soldiers lying in the middle of the road.

‘MILITARY EXERCISE IN THE MIDDLE OF TRAFFIC’

For this scene, one user asked, “So who will protect these soldiers?” while another user commented: “Is it normal that they forget to cut the flow of traffic?” he asked. Many users also rated the images as “more like a computer game than an exercise.”

On the other hand, the strategic intelligence site Opexnews said in a publication that some people who participated in the exercise said: “We played the war game to please the executives.”

French cartoonist David Buonomo, known as Dadou, mocked the exercise with a cartoon he drew. Buonomo compared the French soldiers’ exercise to the Super Mario game in his cartoon titled “Orion Exercise on the Gardiole River”.

In addition, many caps sharing on Twitter “about exercise becoming comedy” drew attention.

The second stage of the Orion Military Exercise, launched in 2021 within the NATO allies, was organized to cover 14 regions of France. The last phase of the second stage of the exercise, in which 7,000 soldiers from France, the United States, Italy, Spain, Belgium and England participated, took place in Cahors, Lot province, France.

The exercise, which is carried out to prepare the French army for high-level conflicts, will continue in the north of the country with the participation of 12,000 soldiers in the spring. The exercise is claimed to have cost €35 million. (AA)