The winter will be harsh. A few hours after speaking with Vladimir Poutine, it was a worried Emmanuel Macron who showed up on the heights of Bormes-les-Mimosas (Var), to celebrate the 78e anniversary of the liberation of the village, August 17, 1944.
The President of the Republic had already prepared the French for a difficult return to school and winter, during his interview on July 14, due to the risks of energy shortages and the soaring prices induced by the war in Ukraine. In Bormes, for his first speech after a few days of rest at Fort Brégançon, he reiterated with pessimism about the days to come.
“I am thinking of our people, who will need the strength of soul to face the coming times, to resist uncertainties, sometimes to ease and adversity, and, united, to agree to pay the price of our freedom and our values”launched the Head of State. “Yes, the ghosts of the spirit of revenge, the flagrant violations of the sovereignty of States, the intolerable contempt of the peoples, the imperialist will reappear from the past to impose themselves in the daily life of our Europe, our neighbors, our friends “he hammered.
Emmanuel Macron also denounced “Vladimir Putin’s Brutal Attack” in Ukraine, and refers to his phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, then with his Russian counterpart, “to seek to obtain the necessary commitments to maintain nuclear security on Ukrainian soil”. In “this war that thunders at our doors”the Head of State hailed the “heroic resistance” of the Ukrainian people in the face of “terrible assaults by the Russian army and its auxiliaries”.
Climate: Emmanuel Macron seemed almost resigned
Traditionally, this feast of August 17 is an opportunity to salute the memory of the tens of thousands of soldiers who landed in 1944 on the coasts of Provence to put an end to the German occupation. It has become a traditional stopping point for the president before the start of the school year. The commemoration, originally scheduled for Wednesday, was delayed two days due to weather warnings. For the past two years, this ritual seems to have been sadly marked by current climate events. In the summer of 2021, it was the Massif des Maures, nearby, which was ablaze; this year, Corsica is licking its wounds in the aftermath of deadly storms that killed five people.
About what he calls “devastating climatic cataclysms”, the head of state seemed almost resigned. “They unfortunately threaten to intensify and repeat themselves”, did he declare. Faced with this, the emphasis is on managing the consequences rather than on prevention – the priority is ” to rethink our warning and safety systems and the organization of forests”.
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