In fact, the Americans and British had impeccable intelligence on Russian preparations and took the unprecedented step of making the information public in the weeks leading up to the invasion in an apparent attempt to pressure Mr Putin to change tack.

One military source questioned whether the DRM was to blame as its main role was to provide intelligence on operations, not on an army’s intentions.

Its services had concluded that Russia “had the means to invade Ukraine and what happened showed that it was right,” the source told AFP.

Le Monde said the DRM, which has seen its staff numbers increased in recent years, had often found itself sidelined by France’s powerful foreign intelligence service, the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), famous abroad thanks to the hit TV series “The Bureau.”

Gen Vidaud had ended up at his post as part of a complex game of “musical chairs” that saw him occupy the post of commander of special operations, COS, the French special forces, between 2019 and 2021.

Alexandre Papaemmanuel, professor at the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) in Paris and a specialist in intelligence, said the DRM should not be the only branch of the security services to take the blame.

But he added: “The warning is for the entire (intelligence) community. You have to be efficient and meet all the threats.”

Le Monde said the Ukraine war had painfully highlighted the limitations of French intelligence compared to the UK and US, which have larger budgets and less draconian surveillance restrictions.

“Even if this reliance on Anglo-Saxon intelligence has existed for a long time, particularly in the fight against terrorism and in space, the war in Ukraine has shed light on it in a crude way,” the paper wrote.

It said France has remained wary of its reliance on the British and the Americans ever since the 2003 Iraq war when it felt they had misled it with dubious intelligence on “weapons of mass destruction”.