MACRON MEETS PUTIN IN DIPLOMATIC TEST
First meeting between the French and Russian presidents reveals tensions over several issues, including Ukraine and Syria
New French president welcomes Russian leader to Versailles where their differences on Ukraine and Syria are in full view,
VERSAILLES // The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin yesterday held their first meeting since the former came to office, with differences on Ukraine and Syria in full view. Mr Macron welcomed Mr Putin to the splendour of the Versailles palace outside Paris with a perfunctory handshake – after the 39-year-old made a point of outlasting US president Donald Trump when they clasped hands at the Nato summit last week.
Mr Putin’s visit is the latest test of Mr Macron’s diplomatic mettle after the G7 talks in Sicily last week and the Nato summit in Brussels, where he turned the tables on Mr Trump by refusing to release the American leader’s hand for several seconds during the handshake for the cameras.
“It is essential to talk to Russia because there are many international issues that will not be resolved without a tough exchange with the Russians,” Mr Macron said in Sicily.
Russia’s powerful ambassador to France, Alexander Orlov, said he hoped the meeting could help turn the page on the fraught relationship between Mr Putin and Mr Macron’s predecessor, Francois Hollande.
“Many things in the future will depend on the first meeting,” Mr Orlov said.
“It is very important that we begin to dissipate the mistrust that has built up in recent years.”
As a candidate, Mr Macron had tough words for Russia, accusing it of following a “hybrid strategy combining military intimida- tion and an information war”.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2014, Russia has flexed its muscles with a series of war games involving tens of thousands of troops in areas bordering Nato Baltic states.
Mr Macron told a French weekly that he was “not bothered” by leaders who “think in terms of power ratios”, giving Mr Putin as an example along with Mr Trump. But Mr Macron, who became France’s youngest president three weeks ago, said he did not believe in “the diplomacy of public invective but in bilateral dialogue”. The French leader said he would make “not a single concession” to Russia on the long-running conflict in Ukraine as he and his G7 colleagues said they were prepared to strengthen sanctions against Moscow.
Government forces have been battling Moscow- backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine for more than three years. Western powers accuse Russia with failing to honour its commitments under the Minsk accords framework for ending the hostilities. France helped to lead the sanctions, which have seriously dented EU-Russia trade, with a retaliatory Russian embargo on European agricultural products hurting French farmers.
The six-year Syrian conflict will also be high on the agenda, with Mr Macron saying he was in favour of “building an inclusive political solution in a much more collective way”.
He regretted that none of the G7 states were party to Syria peace talks under way in the Kazakh capital Astana initiated by Russia, Iran and Turkey.
Separate UN-backed negotiations have become bogged down in Geneva.
Russia is a strong supporter of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad whereas, as Mr Putin’s adviser Yuri Ushakov said before the visit, France “is among the countries with a very severe stance to- wards the regime”.
Coming so soon after an election in which the Kremlin was widely seen as backing Mr Macron’s far-right rival Marine Le Pen – with Mr Putin hosting her during a visit to Moscow – the encounter in Versailles will have an added personal edge. Moscow has also been blamed for a raft of cyber attacks on Mr Macron’s election campaign, with aides accusing the Kremlin of mounting a “smear cam- paign” against him.
Mr Putin was quick to congratulate Mr Macron on his election success, urging him to “overcome mutual distrust” and “join forces to ensure international stability and security”.
The visit comes seven months after the Russian president cancelled a trip to Paris for the opening of a Russian cathedral complex near the Eiffel Tower in a spat over Syria with Mr Hollande, who had said Russia’s bombing of the Syrian city of Aleppo could amount to war crimes.
In Versailles, Mr Macron and Mr Putin will inaugurate an exhibition marking 300 years of Franco- Russian ties since the visit of Russia’s modernising tsar Peter the Great to France in 1717.
After the talks , Mr Putin will visit the Paris Orthodox cathedral complex on his own.