Ukraine crisis: is there a secret agreement between Russia and the United States?

Will the French president be overtaken? Emmanuel Macron meets his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday to find a way out of the Ukrainian crisis, to “build emergency responses”. A long-awaited meeting with a head of state experienced in the exercise, but behind the scenes, discussions were held between the United States and Russia, according to the editorialist Vincent Hervouet.

Emmanuel Macron in a role he loves

Emmanuel Macron loves the smell of powder. The crisis grays him. For five years, he has been taking risks, he has been talking to the plague victims. Do you remember his “bromance” with Donald Trump, selfies with MBS, the Saudi heir? It was also risky to sponsor a facade reconciliation between the Libyan enemy brothers in 2017. The agreement was born dead. It took nerve to invite an Iranian minister on the sidelines of the G7 in Biarritz in 2019. In vain. And disembark as a savior in ravaged Beirut in 2020, to put the great Lebanese feudal lords on notice. who are still there.

This is the strategy of the diplomatic raid, mounted to the snatch. With immediate benefit, in terms of com. And almost immediately forgotten because there is nothing left of this voluntarism in the Sahel, the Middle East, Algeria, Australia… Diplomacy requires penumbra, patience, prudence, long time, strategic vision. But for 25 years, since Jacques Chirac became a champion of the Arab world by piquing anger in Jerusalem, the fold is taken: his successors have been trying the blows of splinters which bring up their popularity inside. Nicolas Sarkozy has obtained a ceasefire in Georgia. François Hollande lived the greatest day of his life in Timbuktu. Emmanuel Macron, in turn, seeks glory, facing the bear head-to-head in his den.

The question of a possible secret agreement between Biden and Putin

US intelligence believes that Russia is actually planning a full-scale invasion. The Americans have even calculated that the conflict will kill 50,000 civilians, 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers, and push five million refugees into Poland. This is the high estimate. In Kiev, the leaders denounce predictions of the apocalypse. Ukrainian authorities say the chances of a diplomatic solution are considerably higher than that of a military escalation.

The Ukrainians know what is at stake, what is on the table: a strategic agreement on security in Europe. The first since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Russians want security guarantees from NATO, that is to say from the Americans. And the Americans are not unhappy that NATO is resurrecting in Ukraine.

Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin saw each other for a long time in June in Geneva. Maybe they agreed? The two men need a maximum of hype, an artificial crisis to impose this agreement around them. Blackmail to chaos, all or nothing. Hence the maneuvers on the Russian side, the dispatch of fresh troops and the tocsin on the American side. Experts take this scenario of a Russian-American double game seriously. They note that the Biden team responded in just two days to the Kremlin’s deal proposal. Whereas normally, it would have taken weeks to study it in detail.

France could endorse the outfit of the flying firefighter

It would not be the first time that Europe has been the dupe of an agreement negotiated behind its back by the Russians and the Americans. As far as France is concerned, this allows it to put on the always becoming uniform of the flying fireman and perhaps even to play honest brokers between Moscow and Kiev.

No one will blame President Emmanuel Macron for trying. Nor, moreover, to fail: reunions between Moscow and Paris are often disappointing. We can even hope that he gets a gesture from Putin. For example, that his proteges, the mercenaries of the Wagner group, stop marching on the rangers in Mali.