Remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron on possible security guarantees for Russia at the time of peace negotiations have provoked mixed reactions in Germany. Macron had commented on the Ukraine war in a TV interview. He emphasized an agreement between Washington and Paris: “The United States and France want the same thing: put pressure on Russia so that it comes back to the negotiating table,” he told broadcaster TF1. He also spoke to US President Joe Biden about “the security architecture in which we want to live tomorrow”. An “important point” for Russian President Vladimir Putin is the “fear that NATO will be on his doorstep and that weapons will be stationed that threaten Russia’s security,” Macron said. It will also be about “how we protect our allies by giving Russia security guarantees if one day it comes back to the negotiating table,” said Macron.
“As long as Russia pursues an imperialist foreign policy, a pan-European peace order that includes Russia is not possible,” Nils Schmid, the SPD’s foreign policy spokesman in the Bundestag, told the newspaper “Die Welt”. Green foreign politician Jürgen Trittin spoke out against “unilateral” security guarantees. “Anyone who demands them must first spell out the promised security guarantees for Ukraine,” he told Die Welt.
Left party leader Martin Schirdewan, on the other hand, welcomes Macron’s statement. “We urgently need peace negotiations to end this miserable war. That’s why Macron’s initiative is the right one,” he told the Rheinische Post.