The day after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, missile fire targeted Kiev for the first time on Friday. Last night, Emmanuel Macron said he once again had Vladimir Putin on the phone to try to start a dialogue with a view to an end to hostilities.
The two men had “a frank, direct and rapid exchange” according to the French president who asked his counterpart “to stop the fighting as soon as possible and “to discuss” with the Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Zelensky. Emmanuel Macron denounced Vladimir Putin’s double game. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, “we were still discussing the details of implementing the Minsk agreements. So, yes, there was duplicity, there was a deliberate, conscious choice by President Putin to launch the war when we could still negotiate peace,” he said.
“Europe has no choice but to become a power”
The French president, who was speaking after an EU summit in Brussels, recalled that the conflict in Ukraine proved “the need for our Europe to accelerate its sovereignty agenda”.
The war is here, on our soil. In the tragic times we live in, Europe has no choice but to become a power. pic.twitter.com/EQllCneROo
—Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 25, 2022
“If it were necessary to have the demonstration that Europe is not simply a consumer market but indeed a power which must think about its energy independence by itself, a Europe of Defense with technological sovereignty, the war that we are in the process of living demonstrates this to us cruelly». And to add this sentence which testifies to the current incapacity of Europeans to face the belligerent will of Russia: “Europe has no other choice but to become a power”.