2023-08-21 09:31:06
Nicolas Sarkozy during the studio recording of the audio version of his previous book, “Le temps des storms” (L’Observatoire, 2020), June 2, 2021. GILLES BASSIGNAC / DIVERGENCES
He used, even abused, storytelling, this art of narrative and staging, to accompany his political action. Nicolas Sarkozy applies the same rule to his Memoirs, scripted and accompanied by a neat launch. After Passions (The Observatory, 2019), and The Time of Storms (L’Observatoire, 2020), two bestsellers, the former president – who has always been obsessed with sales or audience figures – hopes to repeat the feat with this new volume. The time of battles (Fayard, 592 pages, 28 euros), which covers the years 2009, 2010 and 2011, the heart of his five-year term.
For this last book, he left his historic publisher, Muriel Beyer of L’Observatoire editions, for Fayard, property of his friend Arnaud Lagardère and soon under the control of another of his relatives, Vincent Bolloré. “I wanted to take the reader by the hand, to make him live these years at the Elysée as if he had been by my side throughout these events”, writes the true-false retired politician, who joined the supervisory board of the Lagardère group in 2020.
Even before being published, its pages on Russia, accompanied on August 16 bya river interview in Le Figaro Magazine, have already caused controversy. The former president, according to whom France is wrong to deliver “continuous flow weapons to one of the belligerents”, slay them “beneficial postures” of those who call for support for Ukraine ” until the end “. “Is it reasonable to make war without making it and to wage a conflict without taking the trouble to ever specify what are the aims and objectives that one seeks to achieve? », he asks, judging any backtracking illusory on the territorial level, whether it is Crimea or even Donbass. In both cases, he suggests the holding of referendums supervised by the international community.
Read also: Nicolas Sarkozy on Russia: a “terrible fault” for Julien Bayou, “common sense” for Dmitri Medvedev, the former Russian president
L’Ukraine, “bridge between Europe and Russia”would therefore not be destined to join NATO, nor even the European Union, it must remain ” neutral “he says, calling for renewed dialogue with Vladimir Putin, whom he has never found “irrational” when he saw him. “It is the duty of the French president to keep the path of dialogue with Russia open”, he enjoins. Remarks which have already given rise to a multitude of indignant reactions, the Renaissance deputy for Yvelines Natalia Pouzyreff, president of the France-Russia group in the National Assembly, notably inviting the former head of state not to rewrite the history.
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