The French President must meet on Tuesday his Ukrainian counterpart to try to defuse the crisis with Russia, ensuring that Moscow’s non-climbing guarantees.
Le Monde with AFP
In the aftermath of his meeting with the Russian president, who was ready to “compromises”, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, went, Tuesday, February 8, to Kiev, where he must meet his counterpart, Volodyymyr Zelensky, after presenting Moscow proposals to defuse the crisis around Ukraine.
On the plane that carried him from the Russian capital to the Ukrainian capital, Emmanuel Macron told reporters: “It was for me to block the game, to prevent climbing and opening new perspectives (…) This goal for me is filled, “ensuring” obtained “during his discussions with Vladimir Putin” that there is no degradation or climbing “in the Russian-Western crisis related to Ukraine, confronted with A deployment of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers at his borders.
m. Macron will then meet in Berlin the Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, himself just returned from Washington as part of a series of European diplomatic efforts this week and the next. According to the French Presidency, Mr. Macron’s proposals relate to a commitment not to take new military initiatives on both sides, the beginning of a dialogue, including the Russian military system, or peace negotiations on the conflict. in Ukraine and the beginning of a strategic dialogue.
After more than five hours of discussion, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Monday that “some of the ideas” of his French counterpart could “lay the foundation of common advances” and must speak with the French head of state after traveling to Kiev. “President Putin assured me of his availability to engage in this logic and his desire to maintain the stability and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Macron said.
“No winner”
“We will do everything to find compromises that can satisfy everyone,” said Kremlin’s master, ensuring that neither he or Mr. Macron do not want a Russian-NATO war that “would not have any Winner “. On the other hand, he did not say a word of his projects concerning Russian soldiers always camping on the borders of Ukraine and who leave a fear of an invasion. Mr. Putin again denounced the Western refusal to give in to the end of the NATO enlargement policy and the withdrawal of its military means of Eastern Europe, while not to threaten Ukraine.
Once again, he accused Ukraine to be solely responsible for the stalemate in which the peace talks in the conflict opposing Kiev to prothazed separatists, sponsored by Moscow despite the Kremlin denials. It has been a joke at the address of the Ukrainian President, who has been criticized with respect to elements of the peace plan negotiated in 2015 between Kiev and Moscow thanks to a Franco-German mediation. “Whether you like it or not, my pretty, will have to stand.” Putin dropped.
Russia has already appended part of Ukraine in 2014, the Crimean Peninsula. Since then, rebels supported by Moscow are also at war with the Ukrainian army in eastern Ukraine.
“absolutely united”
The French President is the first foreground Western leader to meet Vladimir Putin since the aggravation of tensions in December. The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, will meet in his turn Vladimir Putin in Moscow, on February 15, after a passage by Kiev. Americans have warned Russia that a new Russian attack of Ukraine would have terrible consequences for Russia, with the adoption of devastating sanctions.
United States and Germany are “absolutely united” as to the sanctions to inflict in Russia if it ever attacked, and the two countries would take “the same measures”, assured Mr. Scholz in Washington on Monday. The American President promised that an attack would mean “the end” of the Russo-German but controversial North Stream 2. The United States, Germany and the United Kingdom have also sent military reinforcements in Europe. The American intelligence assured that Russia had 70% of the device necessary for a large-scale offensive in Ukraine.