After having staged their closeness for a long time, Nicolas Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron are now talking to each other from a distance. The former president opened hostilities by criticizing, in his latest book, The time of battles (Fayard), France’s policy in Ukraine. Ukraine, he believes, must remain neutral, must not join NATO, must not enter the European Union. France is wrong to deliver “continuous flow weapons to one of the belligerents”insists Nicolas Sarkozy on the airwaves, calling for “renew the dialogue with Vladimir Putin”. “It is the duty of the French president to keep the path of dialogue with Russia open”he recommends in the direction of this successor for which he called to vote a year ago.
The former tenant of the Elysée reiterated these remarks Wednesday evening August 23 on the television news of TF1. “When I was President of Europe and President of France, I was confronted with Putin, very brutally, when he committed the outrage of invading Georgia” in 2008, he boasted, referring to “eight hours of extremely violent discussions”after which the Russian President “withdrew the tanks”.
Now retired from political life, Nicolas Sarkozy invites Emmanuel Macron to follow his example. While acknowledging that Vladimir Putin has “committed a fault” in attacking Ukraine, the former leader of the right, on the strength of his own experience, judges “that there are two ways to win a war: either you annihilate the adversary, or you discuss with him and you find a compromise”. To his eyes, “the path of diplomacy and discussion has not been used to the end”.
“We are not talking about the same place”
While the words of the former French president are widely relayed by the pro-Kremlin Russian media, Emmanuel Macron wanted to reassure the Ukrainians on Wednesday. “I want to say it here once again in front of you, by your side, very clearly: France recognizes neither the annexation by Russia of Ukrainian territories, nor the results of the sham elections that have been organised”insisted the French president in a pre-recorded video message broadcast during a Crimean Platform summit, an annual event wanted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to recall Ukrainian sovereignty over the peninsula.
French diplomacy for its part recalled that the French position on Ukraine had not changed. Asked in Point on the pro-Russian positions of his predecessor, Emmanuel Macron does not add: “We are not talking about the same place”he eludes, a delicate way of recalling that Nicolas Sarkozy is no longer in a position to have a fair assessment of the circumstances.
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