Emmanuel Macron accuses Moscow of bringing the world back to “the age of imperialism and colonies”

Tuesday, the Kremlin had the ears whistling during the passage of Emmanuel Macron before the General Assembly of the United Nations. “Let’s not resign ourselves to the fracture of the world”, launched the president at the UN, urging world leaders to reject “the new order” of division that “imperialist” Russia seeks to impose with the war in Ukraine .

In a sometimes fiery plea that contrasted with the calm tone of the speeches at the General Assembly, he called for the invention of “new cooperation” to meet the challenges facing the world, from conflicts to climate change and pandemics.

“A collective surge” desired

“The situation of our planet increases our demands”, declared Emmanuel Macron, wishing “a collective start” to “build a new contract between the North and the South”. This imperative is made all the more urgent by the war in Ukraine initiated by Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. “We all have a role in ending it because we are all paying the price.” “What we have been witnessing since February 24 is a return to the age of imperialism and colonies,” insisted Emmanuel Macron. But “who is hegemonic today if not Russia? “.

The Head of State thus sought to dismantle the idea that the war in Ukraine is a regional conflict resulting from the opposition between Westerners and Russia and, beyond that, the rest of the world. As a result, many capitals, in Africa, Asia or the Middle East, indeed refuse to condemn Moscow.

“Contemporary imperialism is not European or Western and takes the form of territorial invasion backed by globalized hybrid warfare that uses the price of energy, food security, nuclear safety, access to information and population movements as weapons of division and destruction”, denounced Emmanuel Macron. Faced with this, the countries “which are silent today serve in spite of themselves, or secretly, with a certain complicity, the cause of a new imperialism, of a contemporary cynicism which disintegrates our international order without which peace is possible “.

Alert on “the tension between the United States and China”

In the longer term, Emmanuel Macron warns that this “attempt to partition the world (…) reinforces the tension between the United States and China”, particularly in the Indo-Pacific zone, one of France’s strategic priorities.

In recent months, the French president has regularly scolded countries that have remained neutral, notably during a July visit to Cameroon where he denounced the silence in the face of Russia’s “hybrid presence” in Africa, particularly in Mali. He was to carry this message again during a dinner to which the Ivorian, Colombian and Argentine presidents and Indian, Indonesian and Egyptian ministers were invited in New York on Tuesday.

source site