“Russia cannot and should not win this war…Russian aggression must fail,” Emmanuel Macron said in Munich on Friday. ODD ANDERSEN/AFP
The French president wants to intensify his support for Ukraine “to move towards credible negotiations” which are not yet on the agenda.
In 2007, it was there, in the prestigious Munich Security Conference, long considered the Davos of defence, that Vladimir Putin gave a very brutal speech against the West and the United States, to the amazement of European political leaders who listened to him. The Russian president had denounced this “unipolar world“, do “of a single master, a single sovereign».
Already the first guns of the war in Georgia were pointing in 2008, of the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But only the countries of Central and Eastern Europe heard the era their echo. This year, the Bayerischer Hof hotel has been repainted in the colors of Ukraine, with its giant blue and yellow posters reminding everyone that Ukraine and Westerners share the same boat. Vladimir Putin’s war drove Russian officials out of the Bavarian capital.
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Revenge of Russia
A year after the start of the war, at the time of the first assessment, Emmanuel Macron confirmed the slight change in his Russian policy. Him whose certain formulas – do not “humiliate“Russia, give him “security guarantees– had shocked the Ukrainians and their Eastern European allies, delivered an unambiguous speech about France’s goals. “Russia cannot and must not win this war… Russian aggression must fail“, did he declare. After having, at the beginning of the war, hoped that it would end quickly, the French president, who adapts to the circumstances” according to one of his relatives, recognized that it was necessary to prepare for a conflict “long term“. Russia, “who did not digest the fall of the Soviet empire» and takes his revenge by pursuing the «crazy dream» of reconstituting it, is far, very far from the first step of the gigantic staircase which leads to peace. “It will have to last… We are ready to intensify our efforts“, he said.
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But on the merits, Emmanuel Macron, even if he paid attention to the choice of formulas, did not break with his convictions towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For a few days, the Élysée had been highlighting words that until then had not been spoken in Paris, such as the need for a “victoireof Ukraine and adefeatfrom Russia. This was not the case with Emmanuel Macron in Munich. With the French president as with Tolstoy, war and peace always go hand in hand. “We must now prepare the conditions and terms of peace” he said. He recalls it since the beginning of the war: “None of us will change the geography, Russia will always be on the European continent“. There cannot therefore beof lasting and comprehensive peace on the continent without embracing the Russian question».
Emmanuel Macron recognizes this, he who has not spoken to Vladimir Putin since September 11: “Today is not the time for dialogue.” But his goal, in reiterating military and political support for kyiv, is to “force Russia to come to the negotiating table on Ukraine’s terms“. We feel that he is impatient to work for this peace which for the moment neither the aggressor, Vladimir Putin, nor the attacked, Volodymyr Zelensky, want, but which he knows will come “on time“. One of the ways to prepare it upstream is to work to regain the trust of the “Sud globalwhich does not condemn the aggression against Russia. He who always said he wanted to make France a “ppower of mediationinsists on the fact that Europemust take its place at the negotiating table“. And to those in Eastern Europe who believe that peace, or in any case a lasting peace, cannot come as long as Vladimir Putin is in power, he replies: “I do not believe for a second in the “change regime”».
Strategic autonomy
On an air of Schubert played on the piano in the enclosure of the conference, Volodymyr Zelensky saw, in videoconference from kyiv, parade the photos and the significant videos of the first year of war. The destruction imposed on the cities of his country, the wounds inflicted on the civilian populations. The Ukrainian President did not speak of peace and negotiations but, on the contrary, of the imperative of “defeat Russia” militarily. “There is no alternativehe said to applause. He also urged Ukraine’s allies to deliver more weapons more quickly. “Vladimir Putin tries to buy time. We need to go fast. We need speed in the delivery of weapons, in decisions aimed at limiting Russian potential. There is no other solution than speed, because it is on it that life dependshe asserted. He would like to go faster and offer his country a victory in 2023. He is probably worried about the resilience of Westerners and the ability of the Ukrainian army to face the waves of Russian soldiers promised by the mobilization announced by the Kremlin. In 2022, he came to Munich to look for the “Western determination” to counter the Russian military threat. “At the time I only got it after the Russians invaded us“. Today he asks for tanks, fighter jets, ammunition and missiles before it is too late.
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But is the sense of urgency the same among Ukraine’s Western allies? No, because he is constrained both by the fear of Russian reactions to a stronger commitment from Europe and the United States, by the fear of the chaos that could follow a departure of Vladimir Putin and by the limits of the defenses and European armies. Emmanuel Macron, who has made strategic autonomy one of his foreign policy priorities, has launched a new appeal to his allies to convince them that European defense does not work on NATO’s flowerbeds. “We must reinvest in our defence, accelerate our ability to produce on European soil.» The «reset” must be “mental” but also “material”. Will France and Europe manage to catch up?
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