Andrew Korybko: SVR Revealed That British & French Troops Are Already In Odessa
By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 9/25/25
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) published a report warning about the EU’s plans to occupy Moldova, which holds its next parliamentary elections on Sunday. According to their sources, large-scale protests are expected after the ruling liberal-globalists falsify the vote, following which President Maia Sandu will request help to put down what she’ll frame as a Russian-backed revolt. SVR also repeated last winter’s warning about threats to Russian troops in Transnistria independent of the aforesaid scenario.
On that topic, they revealed that “A NATO ‘landing’ is being prepared in Ukraine’s Odessa region to intimidate Transnistria. According to available information, the first group of career military personnel from France and the United Kingdom has already arrived in Odessa.” This bombshell comes less than a week after Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed during an ambassadorial roundtable discussion that Russia would consider any foreign troops in Ukraine to be “legitimate military target[s].”
While rumors have abounded since the beginning about Western troops in Ukraine and not just “mercenaries” (even if the latter are active servicemen on leave and out of uniform), Russia hadn’t hitherto confirmed this, ergo its repeated threats to target them if they deploy there. The context within which SVR reported the presence of French and UK troops in Odessa concerns Europe’s, Ukraine’s, and US warmongers’ efforts to manipulate Trump into escalating US involvement in the conflict.
That led to Trump flip-flopping on Ukraine and even approving NATO downing Russian jets if they’re accused of violating the bloc’s airspace, which risks emboldening them to stage a provocation for pulling him into mission creep even if it’s really all just “sarcasm” or “5D chess” on his part like some believe. All the while, reports have swirled about the Western security guarantees he (or at least his team) envisages for Ukraine, which could include a “no-fly zone” and even Western troops over and in at least parts of it.
All of this is relevant with respect to the Romanian-Moldovan flank of this conflict, which as this analysis here from over the summer explains, can be used as NATO’s launchpad for the aforesaid scenarios. Given what SVR just revealed, and there’s no reason to doubt their sources nor SVR’s sincerity in publicly reporting what they just discovered, some uniformed Western troops (French and UK) are already in Ukraine. To make matters even more sensitive, they’re in Odessa, which Russians consider their own.
Even though it’s not in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, Russians still hold it close to their hearts for historical reasons after their ancestors built that city from the ground up, thus making it all the more provocative that the French finally began acting on their speculative plans from early 2024. Putin must now decide whether to treat them and the Brits there as legitimate targets exactly as Lavrov said Russia might do or hold back for now to avoid the escalation that those two want for pulling Trump into mission creep.
The dilemma is that striking Western troops in Odessa could spark a crisis for manipulating Trump into escalating the US’ involvement in the conflict, while holding back for now could create facts on the ground that become even more difficult (and possibly more dangerous) for Russia to reverse later on. It was warned in late August that “Direct NATO Intervention In Ukraine Might Soon Dangerously Turn Into A Fait Accompli”, which is now arguably unfolding, it’s just a question of how Russia will respond to this.
