On February 7, 2015, the leaders of the UMP meet in the Salle de la Mutualité, in Paris, for a national council. The discussion revolves around Russia, which annexed the Crimea, Ukrainian territory, a year earlier, and encourages the separatist tendencies of Donbass. The microphone passes into the hands of Nicolas Sarkozy, who aims to regain the Elysée. “We have a civilization in common”he praises about the Russians.
“Sarko the American” lived: after putting France back in the integrated command of NATO, here he is accusing the United States of ” to wish “ this “drama” what is “the separation between Europe and Russia”. No question of getting in the way of Moscow’s territorial ambitions; the sovereignty of Ukraine is not a subject. “Crimea chooses Russia, we can’t blame them”breathes the ex-head of state, who continues, about the Donbass: “We must find the means of an interposition force to protect the Russian speakers of Ukraine. » This country, he concludes, “is not intended to enter the European Union and NATO. » Applause from the room.
Seven years have passed and the awakening is brutal. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24 in an act that amazes the world and reshuffles the cards of the international geopolitical order. Suddenly, the entire French political debate of recent years has been reviewed in the light of the naivety, friendliness or complacency expressed with regard to the Russian president, whether by right-wing leaders, extreme right or radical left. Men and women today qualified as “active accomplices” (François Bayrou) or“useful idiots” (Daniel Cohn-Bendit) of the Kremlin, and who participated in a collective falling asleep.
In 2008, the master of Moscow is officially only the second in the regime, prime minister of a president named Dmitri Medvedev. It was then that François Fillon forged a close bond with his counterpart “Vladimir”, whom he meets several times a year, and of whom remains the image of a friendship sealed around a billiard table at the Sochi residence. The head of the French government declared at that time that “Russia today is a democracy”. After having played a role of mediator for peace in the flash war in Georgia, Nicolas Sarkozy, for his part, suffers from memory lapses. He affirms in Munich, in 2009, that Russia is not “not a country that spontaneously tends towards military aggression with its neighbours”.
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