Let’s go back to May 1940 for a moment. The German Wehrmacht is invading Paris. The bombings are daily. Millions of French are on the streets. And the American President or the British Prime Minister find it diplomatically sensible to say: We must not humiliate Germany. How would we have perceived it?
By saying on Friday in an interview with the regional press that we must not humiliate Russia so that on the day the fighting stops we can find a way out through diplomatic channels , Emmanuel Macron has sent a wounded signal in Ukraine. The news from Paris has been hurting us lately , Constantin Sigov, a Francophile philosopher, confided to us yesterday. I no longer know how to explain to my friends in Kyiv what is happening among your elites.
misunderstandings in the East
I really don’t understand what it means to humiliate Russia , That’s what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked himself in the Financial Times on Tuesday, June 7. What are we talking about ? The fact that Russia has been killing Ukrainians for eight years was actually quite snarky in this interview by the Ukrainian President, who questioned these politicians who want to be leaders . But, he added, to be a leader you don’t have to think of yourself as a leader, you have to act like a leader!
In reality, Europeans are divided. Paris, Berlin and Rome are pleading for a conciliatory line: to help Ukraine, including militarily, without interrupting the dialogue with Moscow. On the other hand, in most of the Central European countries that were under Soviet rule, there was a complete lack of understanding. Also in Scandinavia, while Finland and Sweden are rushing under the umbrella of NATO.
France isolated?
The mere choice of the word “humiliate” is even less popular, as it is part of the palette of pro-Putin arguments. Quite numerous in France, both far right and far left. Fallacious argument, as it entails legitimizing Moscow’s imperialist ambitions and disregarding the rights of the peoples neighboring the Russian Federation. Despite the bombs on Ukraine, the millions of displaced people, the massacres and the ongoing deportations.
All this isolates France and, worse still, raises the old suspicion of historical toleration between Paris and Moscow at the expense of Central Europe. , expected Wednesday 8 June in the Italian press, Bernard Guetta, Macronist MEP.
By February 24, however, Paris was on a diplomatic initiative. The EU Council Presidency even made him a qualified mediator. But today, of course, Paris is arming Kyiv, but does not want to explicitly support Ukraine’s EU accession. Because any expansion in the election campaign is taboo? Without doubt. However, the electoral skull is not enough to explain the blurring of a strategy that has become difficult to read.
COMMENT. War in Ukraine: a question of humiliation that does not pass EXPAND