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France plays down Macron Russia security comment

Comments by France's president about offering Russia security guarantees were taken "out of context", an aide said Friday, after the remarks stoked new tensions with Kyiv before a reconstruction conference in Paris.

France plays down Macron Russia security comment
Photo: JOSE JORDAN/AFP

In an interview with France’s TF1 channel last Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron cast forward to a settlement with Russia after the end of fighting in Ukraine, saying that Moscow would need “guarantees for its own security”.

That provoked new concern in Kyiv that the French leader was again seeking to balance his support for Ukraine’s war effort with diplomatic outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Someone wants to provide security guarantees to a terrorist and murderous state?” the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, Oleksiy Danilov, said on social media.

An aide to the French leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Macron was repeating his long-held view that a negotiated settlement would be needed to end the conflict.

“If you read everything the president said, you see there is nothing new,” the aide said. “He is saying what the Ukrainians say themselves.”

There are fears that the remarks could overshadow a reconstruction conference in Paris next Tuesday that Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal is to attend and President Volodymyr Zelensky to address via video link.

“There’s a gap between what some people say by taking part of a sentence out of context and the reality of the work that we are doing, which is going smoothly,” the aide said.

“The dialogue between the president (Macron) and President Zelensky is excellent.”

Macron himself earlier in the week sought to draw a line under his statements, which have been criticised by other eastern European allies including Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.

“I think we should not… try to create controversy where there is none,” the French leader said during a trip to Albania on Tuesday.

During the TF1 interview, Macron also stressed that France would not put pressure on Ukraine to stop it fighting to regain territory occupied by Russia.

‘One step ahead?’

But many in Kyiv and eastern Europe remain sceptical about the French leader’s intentions, after he said “we must not humiliate Russia” in June and kept up regular calls with Putin after the invasion.

Many French analysts have criticised Macron for the timing of his remarks.

“Of course, we need to be prepared for afterwards and keep up contacts,” Dominique Trinquand, a former French general, told the France 5 channel this week during a debate. “But first you need to win, everyone says this.”

Macron “wants to be one step ahead,” he said.

The conference in Paris on Tuesday will see governments, business and aid agencies come together to look at what immediate assistance they can give Ukraine over the winter.

It will focus on the energy, health, food, transport and water sectors.

“Our starting point is that we’ve seen a change in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine since the month of October when Russia began to intensify its bombing of civilian — not military — infrastructure in Ukraine,” the aide to Macron said.

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POLITICS

French far right leader says party ‘ready’ to govern

French far-right leader Jordan Bardella said his party was ready to govern as he pledged to curb immigration and tackle cost-of-living issues ahead of the country's most divisive election in decades.

French far right leader says party ‘ready’ to govern

“In three words: we are ready,” the 28-year-old  president of the Rassemblement National (RN) told a press conference as he unveiled his party’s programme.

President Emmanuel Macron threw France into turmoil earlier this month by calling the snap election after his centrist party was trounced by RN in a European vote.

Weekend polls suggested the RN would win 35-36 percent in the first round on Sunday, ahead of a left-wing alliance on 27-29.5 percent and Macron’s centrists in third on 19.5-22 percent.

Bardella, credited with helping the RN clean up its extremist image, has urged voters to give the eurosceptic party an outright majority to allow it to implement its anti-immigration, law-and-order programme.

“Seven long years of Macronism has weakened the country,” he said, vowing to boost purchasing power, ‘restore order’ and change the law to make it easier to deport foreigners convicted of crimes.

He reiterated plans to tighten borders and make it harder for foreigners born on French soil to gain citizenship.

“It’s been 30 years the French have not been listened to on this subject,” he said.

Bardella added that the RN would focus on ‘realistic’ measures to curb inflation, primarily by cutting energy taxes.

He also promised a disciplinary ‘big bang’ in schools, including a ban on mobile phones and trialling the introduction of school uniforms, a proposal previously put forward by Macron.

On foreign policy, Bardella said the RN opposed sending French troops into Ukraine – as mooted by Macron – but would continue to provide logistical and material support.

He said his party, which had close ties to Russia before its invasion of Ukraine, would be ‘extremely vigilant’ in the face of Moscow’s attempts to interfere in French affairs.

The election is shaping up as a showdown between the RN and the leftist New Popular Front, which is dominated by the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI).

The New Popular Front has so far refused to publicly declare its candidate for prime minister if it wins, with several key figures urging the polarising LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon to step back.

Bardella claimed the RN, which mainstream parties have in the past united to block, was now the ‘patriotic and republican’ choice faced with what he alleged was the anti-Semitism of Mélenchon’s party.

FLI, which vocally opposes Israel’s war in Gaza and refused to label the October 7th Hamas attacks as ‘terrorism’, strongly denies the charges of anti-Semitism.

In calling an election in just three weeks Macron hoped to trip up his opponents and catch them unprepared.

But analysts have warned the move could backfire spectacularly if the deeply unpopular president is forced to share power with a prime minister from an opposing party.

Marine Le Pen, the RN’s figurehead who is bidding to succeed him as president, has called on him to step aside if he loses control of parliament.

Macron has insisted he will not resign before the end of his second term in 2027 but has vowed to heed voters’ concerns and change course.

“The goal cannot be to just continue as things were,” Macron said in an open letter in French media.

He has urged the French not to make the election a referendum on his leadership, saying it is not, ‘a vote of confidence in the president of the republic’.

On Tuesday, Macron’s prime minister Gabriel Attal will go head-to-head with Bardella in a TV debate.

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