Call to keep Russia in the fold

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that it was time for Europe to reach out to Russia to keep it in the Western fold, check its global ambitions and avoid being caught in the middle of a new Cold War.

Macron didn’t say outright whether he wanted to lift EU sanctions imposed over Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, the heart of East-West tension for the past five years, but he said new sanctions were “not in our interest”.

“Pushing Russia from Europe is a profound strategic error,” Macron said. Europe’s “weaknesses and mistakes” have helped lead Russia boost its alliance with China and revive its influence in Syria, Libya and around Africa.

“It’s not in our interest to be weak and guilty, to forget all our disagreements and to embrace each other again,” he said, but insisted: “The European continent will never be stable, will never be in security, if we don’t pacify and clarify our relations with Russia.”

Macron is trying to revive France’s global clout on multiple fronts, with mixed success. After inviting the Iranian foreign minister as a surprise guest to the Group of Seven summit in France, Macron said yesterday that his risky diplomatic manoeuvre helped create “the possible conditions of a useful meeting”.

Macron acknowledged that his efforts to bring Iran and the US together were “fragile”, but said he still saw a “possible path” to rapprochement after decades of conflict.

He called for a new global economic order, decrying an “unprecedented crisis” in the market economy.

Amid uncertainty over US trade policies, he said the market economy had become too finance-driven, creating inequalities “that are shaking up our political order”.

Brazil, meanwhile, rejected offers of international aid championed by Macron at the G7 to fight Amazon rainforest wildfires. Its President Jair Bolsonaro accused France and other rich countries of treating the region like a “colony”.

Macron called that interpretation a “mistake”, saying the money was aimed at countries in the region and was a sign of friendship, not “aggression.”

He said the money wasn’t just aimed at Brazil but at nine countries in the Amazon region, including Colombia and Bolivia.

It is the latest deterioration in a running feud between Bolsonaro and Macron.

The French leader had earlier called the Brazilian leader “extraordinarily rude” after he had endorsed a derogatory Facebook post about Brigitte Macron’s appearance.

A Brazilian posted a meme comparing Brigitte Macron, 66, and Brazil’s 37-year-old first lady Michelle Bolsonaro. It had the tagline: “Now you understand why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro?” Bolsonaro replied to the post: “Don’t humiliate the guy, ha ha.”

When asked about the post at the summit, Macron replied: “He said very disrespectful things about my wife.

“I have great respect for the Brazilian people and can only hope they soon have a president who is up to the job… I think Brazilian women will probably be ashamed to read that from their president.”

Further stinging barbs were fired when Bolsonaro’s chief of staff rebuked the French president for his failure to prevent the Notre Dame fire in April.

“Macron cannot even avoid a foreseeable fire in a church that is a world heritage site,” he added.

“What does he intend to teach our country?”