In his speech on the conflict in Ukraine on Wednesday evening, the President of the Republic attributed the sole responsibility for the war to Vladimir Putin, while saying he was ready for dialogue.
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What is not said, in diplomacy, is often as important as what is clearly stated. “Democracy is no longer seen as an indisputable regime”, well said Emmanuel Macron in his speech on Wednesday evening, but unlike a Joe Biden or a Boris Johnson, the French president was careful not to qualify Vladimir Poutine of “dictator”. A way for the head of state to insult neither his Russian counterpart nor the future. Emmanuel Macron thus reserved a last chance for diplomacy and reiterated his desire to maintain dialogue with the Russian President; without clearing it. The President of the Republic even attributed to him the sole responsibility for the ongoing conflict in Ukraine “Neither France, nor Europe, nor Ukraine, nor the Atlantic Union wanted this war, on the contrary. (…) It is quite alone and deliberately that, renouncing one by one the commitments made before the community of nations, President Putin has chosen war”.
“Russia is not attacked, it is the aggressor”, continued Emmanuel Macron, who brought a heavy charge once morest Putin’s “revisionist reading” of the History of Europe: “this war is not not a conflict between the West and Russia” and “even less a fight once morest Nazism, it is a lie, an insult to the history of Russia and Ukraine”. “The Russian leaders are attacking the memory of the Holocaust in Ukraine, as they are attacking the memory of the crimes of Stalinism in Russia”, continued the French president, evoking a war of “revenge” and the will to reconnect with time “of empires, invasions, exterminations”.
Read also, Macron: The war in Ukraine “comes to hit our democratic life and the electoral campaign”
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We are not at war with Russia
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In this presidential address, an update on the situation promised at the end of February, Emmanuel Macron underlined the unity of Europe and its coordination with the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan, before listing the retaliatory measures once morest “this flagrant violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of a European country”: humanitarian convoys, material support for the Ukrainian resistance, condemnation by the UN, exclusion from sports competitions and cultural events, but above all financial sanctions once morest the Russian government and its supporters, and withdrawal from the interbank system, a terrible blow to the rouble…
But “we are not at war with Russia”, wanted to underline Emmanuel Macron, recalling “everything that binds us to the Russian people, this great European people who sacrificed so much during the Second World War to save Europe from the ‘abyss”. The Head of State also supported the dissidence which is expressed as best it can from Moscow to Saint Petersburg: “Today we stand alongside all the Russians who, refusing an unworthy war to be waged in their name, have the spirit of responsibility and the courage to defend peace”.
Before that, Emmanuel Macron had saluted “the courage of the Ukrainian people who are resisting under fire” and addressed the fraternal support of France” to its president, who, according to him, has become “the face of honor, freedom, bravery”. If he assured to be in constant contact with Volodymyr Zelensky, Emmanuel Macron therefore reiterated his readiness for dialogue with Vladimir Poutine: “I have chosen to stay in contact, as much as I can and as much as necessary, with President Putin to relentlessly seek to convince him to give up arms (…) to prevent the contagion and widening of the conflict as much as we can.”
