Suggest a “path of de-escalation” to Vladimir Putin. Such was the delicate mission of Emmanuel Macron this Friday. The Head of State spoke at the end of the morning with his Russian counterpart about the crisis in Ukraine. What came out of it? Moscow was the first to communicate on this attempt at mediation. Unsurprisingly, Putin repeated that he was not happy: he allegedly told Macron that the West “did not consider” Russian concerns about NATO expansion, says the Kremlin statement.
“The key question has been ignored, which is how the United States and its allies count […] implement the principle that no one should strengthen their security to the detriment of other countries”, further argued the master of the Kremlin, according to the same source.
On the Elysée side, we want to be more positive. The telephone conversation between the two leaders, which lasted more than an hour, “allowed to agree on the need for de-escalation” said the Palace. “President Putin has not expressed any offensive intentions […]. He made it very clear that he was not looking for confrontation. On strategic security in Europe, the two Heads of State “agreed on the continuation of the dialogue which will require that the Europeans […] be part of this dialogue”, which primarily involves the United States and NATO.
On the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists have been opposing Kiev since 2014, President Putin himself insisted on the existing format of talks (known as Normandy) which brings together Russia, Ukraine, the Germany and France and aims to implement the 2015 Minsk peace accords, according to a statement from the Kremlin. “He also wanted to continue with the president (Macron) the discussion started today,” added the Elysée. The “dialogue is difficult” but the “chat channels are open”.
For weeks, Russia has been holding Ukraine hostage because Putin would feel threatened by the extension of NATO to its doors and is opposed to Kiev joining the Alliance. More than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been massed on the Ukrainian border since the end of 2021, which has Westerners fearing an imminent invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s pro-Western neighbor.
“Not the war”
The head of Russian diplomacy said earlier this Friday that he wanted diplomacy and “not the war”. Putin conditions de-escalation on the end of the policy of enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance, in particular to Ukraine, and a return to Western military deployments on the 1997 borders. But the United States and NATO formally rejected Wednesday these demands, while proposing negotiations on reciprocal limits to the deployment of short and medium-range missiles of the two rival nuclear powers in Europe as well as to military exercises near the opposing camp.
“We cannot say that our points of view were taken into account”, had then regretted the spokesman of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov. The head of diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, also noted the absence of a “positive answer” to the main Russian claim. But he did not close the door to dialogue, noting that we could “hope for the start of a serious conversation on secondary issues”. After the interview with Macron, Russia says it is in full reflection and will “determine his reaction to come” after studying in detail the responses of its rivals.
Slow but rare progress, the emissaries announced a new meeting for the beginning of February in Berlin. France saw it “a good sign” Russian, before a meeting between Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin.
Update Friday at 6 p.m. with the declarations of the Elysée on the content of the exchange between Macron and Putin.