French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday filed an indictment against Russia, hammering that its “aggression” in Ukraine must “fail” and accusing Vladimir Putin of depriving his country of the “authority” he had promised it had to return after the fall of Ukraine USSR.
Russia bears “full responsibility for the devastating effects” of the war in Ukraine, he said at the Munich Security Conference a week before the first anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict.
The head of state has been sharply criticized for continuing dialogue with President Vladimir Putin after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and for demanding in a future peace agreement “not to humiliate Russia”.
Since then, contacts between the two leaders have been severed, although the Elysée rejects any interruption in dialogue and Emmanuel Macron is now calling for increased support for Kiev “until Ukraine’s victory”.
“Russia cannot and must not win this war and Russian aggression must fail because we cannot accept the trivialization of the illegal use of force, otherwise the whole of European security and more generally global stability would be called into question,” he said.
Emmanuel Macron then spoke about what he saw as Vladimir Putin’s “failures” for a year “on the ground” in the military, pushing Ukraine towards the EU and NATO and towards Russian opinion.
“The basic assumption was that this aggression would be quick, that Ukraine would not resist and that it would be a matter of a few days, even a few weeks,” he recalled.
The result of the Russian offensive is “the consolidation of Ukraine and its strength” and the decision of Sweden and Finland to join NATO, the settlement of their borders, he said.
“Perhaps the most troubling failure today is President Putin’s failure to give back to Russia what he promised that Russia would be his authority in the world,” he added, citing a “mediocre” Russian gross domestic product and “shrinking” demographics.
“If you want to solidify your future, you need some wild dreams. Either you dream of growth and innovation, of a new Europe based on peace and education, or you revive the old imperial dream based on hegemony and aggression,” he said.
He also accused Russia of being a “power of imbalance and disorder” not only in the former Soviet space but also in the Middle East and Africa “through” the Wagner Group mercenaries.
However, he also reiterated that Europe’s security could not be considered without associating Russia with it.
“There will be no lasting and complete peace on our continent if we don’t know how to take on the Russian question, but in a clear way and without complacency,” he underlined.