For the first time since the poisoning of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny in August 2020, the two countries found themselves Friday, in Paris, for bilateral discussions. On the program, Mali, Ukraine and Belarus, as many subjects of discord.
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The influx of migrants on the border between Belarus and Poland has been invited to the last minute in the discussions, as if to move a meeting that already promised to be explosive. The French and Russian governments relaunched, Friday, November 12, a discussion format suspended by Paris after the poisoning of the opponent Alexei Navalny, in the summer of 2020. The French ministers of foreign affairs and the armies, Jean-Yves le Drian and Florence Parly, have received their Russian counterparts in Paris Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Choïgou.
This “Cooperation Council on Security Issues” had been put in place on the initiative of President Emmanuel Macron, in a contested attempt at strategic dialogue with Russia, after one head-to-face at the fort of brick (Var) with his counterpart Vladimir Putin, in August 2019. A rapprochement perspective more than ever ever overshadowed by the accumulation of litigation subjects. Alexei Navalny is still in prison and the slightest opposition is repressed by the Kremlin; For the number of European capitals, any attempt at relaxation is doomed to failure.
To justify this “firm and demanding” dialogue, the French officials had notified: it should be to approach the topics that are angry.
First of all the Mali, whose government is attempt to use the services of the Russian mercenary society, Wagner. Then, Ukraine, where the conflict remains, on the background of border boots, Russian side. Finally, because it is the last litigation, the “hybrid war” launched by Minsk on the migratory front, instrumentalizing the arrival of migrants at the borders of Poland and Lithuania, two-pointed countries to denounce the regime. of Alexandre Lukashenko, since his fraudulent re-election here is more than a year.
Sterile exchanges
The four meeting held all his promises. On the French side, we did not hide, afterwards, that the discussions had been more tense. No press conference or common communiqué had been announced. Each part was content with a lacical summary of trade, which, in hollow, gives an idea of their infertility.
Thus, on Belarus, the two French ministers “condemned the irresponsible and unacceptable behavior of the Belarusian authorities concerning the instrumentalization of migratory flows aimed at several countries of the European Union [EU]. They also encouraged Moscow “to mobilize his close ties with Belarus to get that there is end”. The official account broadcast by the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry evokes “a situation that can only be resolved in respect of a respectful dialogue between interested parties and on the basis of humanitarian rights”.
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