Emmanuel Macron met with leading members of French parties on Thursday to clarify his position on Ukraine and find a common line.
The background is the French President’s surprising statement that he does not rule out sending troops to Ukraine and thus threatens a direct confrontation with Russia.
The participants reported French media, that Macron insisted on his position during the meeting. “I arrived worried and I leave even more worried,” Manuel Bompard, a lawmaker from the left-wing La France insoumise party, told reporters. The Communist Party’s Fabien Roussel said Macron showed a map of Ukraine and said an advance of Russian troops “towards Odessa or Kiev” could trigger French intervention.
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“There are no borders and no red lines,” concluded Jordan Bardella, leader of the right-wing populist Rassemblement National party, as he left the Elysee Palace. According to Bardella’s account, during the three-hour meeting with Macron he pleaded that “France itself does not go to war with Russia.” He called the French president’s attitude “irresponsible and extremely dangerous for world peace.”
The leader of the LR party, Éric Ciotti, also expressed concern and condemned Macron’s position as “instrumentalization for the purposes of an electoral campaign for the European elections”.
Moscow: Macron increases France’s “involvement” in Ukraine conflict
In a video posted on Telegram on Thursday, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman also condemned Macron. “Mr Macron is convinced of his policy, which is to inflict a strategic defeat on our country,” said Dmitry Peskov. “And it further increases the level of France’s direct involvement” in the Ukraine conflict, Peskov added.
However, Peskov also pointed to the “contradictions” in Macron’s statements on February 26, when he “did not rule out” sending Western ground troops to Ukraine. This caused unrest among France’s NATO allies, most of whom immediately rejected such a deployment of troops, including Germany. Macron then defended his words, but at the same time emphasized that he rejected any “escalation” with Moscow. On Tuesday he called on Ukraine’s allies not to be “cowardly” towards Russia.