In Moscow, French President Macron tried to contribute to the de-escalation around Ukraine in talks with Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin. He dares the balancing act between understanding Moscow’s concerns and the basic principles of the West.
French President Emmanuel Macron listens to the words of welcome from his host Vladimir Putin.
They had called each other three times within a week. On Monday evening, Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin sat across from each other at the narrow ends of a long table in the Moscow Kremlin and addressed each other on a friendly first-name basis. Macron has energetically taken charge of European diplomacy over the looming threat of war in Eastern Europe. It’s about preventing war from breaking out, he told the Journal du Dimanche over the weekend. When the two presidents appeared before the press at midnight local time, they at least conveyed the hope that talks would continue, including in consultation with Ukraine. The next few days are crucial, said Macron.
Pandemic meeting at the long table: Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron in the Kremlin.
Concern about Macron going it alone
A reorganization of European security, Macron said in the newspaper interview before his departure, must not call into question the sovereignty of any European state, but must also show respect to Russia and take into account the “current trauma of this great nation and this great people”.
In some places, these statements had prompted fears that Macron wanted to negotiate a new European order with Putin single-handedly and was frivolously ready to make serious concessions, such as NATO expansion and the fate of Ukraine. Quite apart from the fact that he had no support from the European and American allies, the French president and his entourage were very keen to portray the diplomatic activities as part of a transatlantic strategy. At the same time, however, Macron underlined the need to understand Russia’s position and to take it into account appropriately.
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to his colleague Emmanuel Macron.
The one-hour, repeatedly postponed press conference was also shaped by this after more than five hours of private talks. It quickly became clear that there was no question of a breakthrough. While Putin in his summary of the conversation repeatedly thanked Macron for his willingness to deal so intensively with questions of European security, he largely repeated his well-known positions on NATO expansion, the threat to Russia and the lack of readiness on the part of Ukraine to settle the conflict in Donbass. He did not admit his own mistakes – on the contrary, he once again justified the annexation of Crimea.
Open differences of opinion
For his part, Macron did not hide the fact that he disagreed with Putin on many points. But there will only be security in Europe if Russia also feels secure. So it is an obligation for him and his partners to look for ways for a new, collective European security order – difficult as that is. This must preserve the rights and achievements of the past decades and take into account the different needs. He openly addressed Russia’s violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, among others.
Apparently, Macron wants to bring proposals and considerations to the meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev on Tuesday, both on the issue of Ukraine’s security and on the implementation of the Minsk agreement on conflict resolution in Donbass. Based on what he can report to Putin afterwards, he wants to make further decisions. The Kremlin will also soon send responses to US and NATO reactions to Russia’s proposals for security guarantees. Although these reactions were not satisfactory, Putin decided that the talks could go on. He claimed that he did not see any point in the Russian documents that could not be fulfilled – a daring statement that is likely to cause a shake of the head in Washington or Brussels.
Putin countered the accusation that Russia had deployed a force of 125,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian border by saying that Kiev was also represented in the Donbass with the same number of troops. NATO, which is peaceful but has bombed Serbia, Libya and Iraq, now wants to instruct Russia on where maneuvers can be carried out. It all takes place on their own territory.
NATO war over Crimea?
He justified Ukraine’s strict rejection of NATO membership from a new perspective, as he did last week after the meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban: Ukraine had not given up its claim to the Crimean peninsula, supported by NATO members. If, as a NATO member, it were to want to recapture it militarily, there would be a direct confrontation with Russia. “Do you want to go to war with Russia?” he asked the French in the room. It is always important to keep that in mind.
The situation surrounding Europe’s security and Ukraine was far too complicated to be decisively changed in just one meeting, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier. In the Kremlin, dissatisfaction with Europe’s security order and developments surrounding Ukraine and NATO may be on the verge of boiling point. There was no compulsion to accelerate this process. With its unprecedented deployment of troops, Russia itself is playing with security, which it allegedly sees as an imminent threat. However, the Russian state media portrays this in exactly the opposite way – Western hysteria in the media and the deployment of NATO troops are what created the tense situation.
Apart from the tensions surrounding Ukraine and the European security order, Russia’s military engagement in Mali was also a topic of discussion. Putin insisted that the presence of Russian mercenaries in the country had nothing to do with the Russian state.
Macron wants to consult with Scholz and Duda in Berlin
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who held talks with Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba and is planning a visit to the front line in Donbass for Tuesday, is also in Ukraine, where Macron is traveling to on Tuesday morning. The originally announced meeting with Selenski fell out; Russian state television sensed a scandal behind it.
Macron wants to meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Polish head of state Andrzej Duda in Berlin on Tuesday evening and discuss the talks in Moscow and Kiev with them. Scholz will then be able to report on his visit to Washington. He was on Monday for talks with US President Joe Biden. The Élysée Palace justified the fact that Macron did not, like the German Chancellor next week, first visit Ukraine and then Russia: After all, the problems are with Putin, not with Zelensky.
NZZ live event: Macron or not Macron – France before the election
After Emmanuel Macron “marched through” the 2017 elections as an independent candidate, there is a new starting point before the elections in April. The competition left and right has awakened.
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