The two former French presidents do not share the same analysis of the war in Ukraine. This Thursday, the socialist François Hollande pointed out “the errors” of Nicolas Sarkozy, affirming, unlike his predecessor, that it was necessary to continue to support Ukraine and provide it with weapons, during a seminar in front of elected socialists in Blois.
The former head of state also insisted that the European socialists – therefore including the French socialists – be “on the initiative on this question”, a way of inviting them to refuse a common list for European women with the Nudes. In an interview at Figaro In mid-August, former President Nicolas Sarkozy estimated that Ukraine, invaded on February 24, 2022 by Russia, should “remain neutral” and join neither NATO nor the European Union, suggesting “an international agreement providing extremely strong security assurances to protect it against any risk”.
“Two errors” in Sarkozy’s analysis
Nicolas Sarkozy also judged that in Crimea, annexed in 2014 by Russia, “any step back is illusory”. For him, “an indisputable referendum (…) will be necessary to ratify the current state of affairs”. Speaking at a training seminar of the National Federation of Socialist and Republican Elected Representatives (FNESR) ahead of the PS summer days, François Hollande said that Nicolas Sarkozy had made “two errors” in his analysis.
“There were already security guarantees granted to Ukraine at the time of Ukraine’s independence”, thus recalled the former socialist president, noting that “when the referendums are organized on Russian territory, there is always has the same result. While Nicolas Sarkozy defends “diplomacy, discussion, exchange” with the head of the Kremlin, François Hollande believes that Putin “has made war his ideology”.
“Never get tired” of the war in Ukraine
“It is war that gives him his legitimacy (…) He needs war, aggression, offensive”, so “this negotiation proposal cannot hold”, he judged . For François Hollande, it is necessary “to mobilize public opinion” so as “not to get tired and not to neglect” this conflict, “to continue to support Ukraine” and to “provide it with armaments”.
With the approach of the European elections, where “voices will be raised, particularly on the far right, to say ‘do we still need to support Ukraine?’ he advocates “that European socialists can take the initiative on this issue and can hold this discourse of truth”.