I should never have defended Macron on Putin

The French president’s realpolitik is turning him into a Russian enabler

There’s a peculiarly French way of getting important decisions wrong, and it’s best described by a very British expression that the likes of Emmanuel Macron cannot see the point of, “too clever by half ”. It’s all about finessing power play and triangulating self-interest; replacing simple words such as “honour”, “right” and “wrong” with sophisticated calculations that we call “realism”.

Yesterday, Volodymyr Zelensky called the French president out on it on the national Italian broadcaster, RAI. Macron’s endless negotiations and eagerness to allow Russia to “save face” were “in vain”. “Ukraine is not ready to sacrifice territory and sovereignty. This is a waste of time.”

Faced with the predictable socialmedia outcry, Elysée notables backtracked. “The French President has never ever discussed anything with VVP [Putin] without President Zelensky’s consent, and has never asked him for any concession. He has always said that it was up to the Ukrainians to decide the terms of their negotiations with the Russians,” tweeted both Anne-Sophie Bradelle, from her official presidency account, and the foreign ministry political director Philippe Errera, in the exact same words.

We’ll probably never get to the bottom of this particular instance, but the general line is perfectly consistent with France’s position as defended by her foremost diplomats and generals – types that almost never take a stance without checking it with their hierarchies. Only last week, I was debating with General Vincent Desportes, a former head of the prestigious Ecole de Guerre, who was piously calling for an immediate ceasefire, “so that people won’t suffer” – unwilling to admit that this would result in leaving large chunks of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast and the Donbas, including Mariupol and Kherson, in the hands of an occupier capable of executions, mass deportations, and worse.

I long defended Macron’s approach to Putin. Seeking to keep channels open, in early February, and again two days after the beginning of the Russian attack, seemed sensible, even necessary. At that stage, even my Ukrainian friends in Kyiv and Odesa did not believe that the Russians meant to wage a war of total conquest and annihilation of their country’s identity.

But now my president’s continued equivocation is unforgivable. Macron should shut up. Just add up his latest statements. No EU membership for Ukraine for decades. No Nato membership for Kyiv, either. Repeated warnings not to humiliate Russia. All this plays into the hands of Putin and no one else. Remember back in 2019 Macron was waxing rhapsodic on Russia as “a true European nation, heir to the Enlightenment” – a notion that applied in its time to Turgenev and Chekhov, not to Vladimir today.

Look at Macron’s latest project, the “multi-tier EU” (political Europe, or EU lite) for those European countries that France and Germany disapprove of. That thing doesn’t exist, isn’t financed, has no known shape and hasn’t been agreed by anyone except a Macron-called “Conference for the Future of Europe”, in which citizens drawn by lot were invited to provide “unmediated” public opinion, which somehow would be truer.

Macron’s entire education, like that of most French elites, has taught him to respect strength and power, not courage. It’s the ethos of the civil service that shaped him, and it’s simple defeatism.

It’s infected parts of Europe, too: there’s an Axis of Munichois whiff about Macron and Scholz. (At least France hasn’t insulted her Ukrainian ambassador, as German politicians routinely do, calling the brave Andriy Melnik “crass”.) But, in effect, their weasel words, such as “reasonable”, “sensible”, “practical”, only mean selfish surrender.

But now my president’s continued equivocation is unforgivable. Macron should shut up. All this plays into the hands of Putin and no one else