Published14. March 2024, 22:04
War in Ukraine: “Who can think that Putin will stop there?” launches Macron
Faced with Moscow’s “escalation,” “we must say that we are ready to respond,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday evening.
French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a powerful speech Thursday evening on TF1 and France 2, about the situation in Ukraine and fears of seeing Russia expand the conflict in Europe.
AFP
Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that Europeans must be ready to “respond” to an “escalation” by Russia, judging that it will not “stop there” if it wins the war in Ukraine, but assured that they will never would not take the “initiative” of military engagement against this nuclear power.
“We will never lead an offensive, we will never take the initiative. France is a force for peace,” declared the head of state on the 8:00 p.m. television news of TF1 and France 2. He thus intended to reassure after having sowed trouble, in public opinion and among Kiev’s other allies, by judging at the end of February that the sending, in the future, of Western soldiers to Ukraine should not be ruled out.
“Russia has become a power that wants to expand and it is certain that it will not stop there,” he nevertheless asserted on X in response to questions from Internet users. “If we leave Ukraine alone, if we let Ukraine lose this war, then for sure Russia will threaten Moldova, Romania, Poland,” he warned.
“We will no longer have security”
This new posture of the president, who denounces a “hardening” of Moscow and tries to impose his leadership in aid to the Ukrainian army, has been criticized by numerous European counterparts and by all of his French opponents.
Addressing the French directly through this interview, Emmanuel Macron, however, once again assumed his position. “If Russia were to win”, “we will no longer have security” and the “credibility of Europe will be reduced to zero”, he estimated.
“We have one objective: Russia cannot and must not win this war”, which is “existential for our Europe and for France”, he insisted. Consequently, he tried to educate on this “strategic ambiguity” which he defends against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Too many limits”
“We have put too many limits, if I may say so, in our vocabulary,” explained Emmanuel Macron, recalling that the West had said, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine two years ago, that they would not would “never” send tanks or medium-range missiles to kyiv, before crossing these red lines in the face of the evolution of the conflict.
“If the situation were to deteriorate, we must be ready and we will be ready,” he insisted. He therefore affirmed that those who place “limits” on their support for Ukraine, faced with a Vladimir Putin who has “crossed all limits”, decide “to be weak” and “do not choose to peace but choose defeat.
He specified that he was targeting both those who, this week in the French Parliament, abstained (the National Rally) or voted against (La France insoumise and the communists) the bilateral security agreement with Ukraine. But also those who, elsewhere in Europe, invoke these limits.
A clarification which risks being freshly received on Friday in Berlin, where the French president is going to try to ease tensions with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which have increased tenfold in recent weeks around this issue. The two leaders will meet face-to-face, before a three-way summit also including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.