Security guarantees for Russia: Macron rejects “controversies where there are none”
The French president denied any controversy on Tuesday “where there is no one” after his remarks on future security guarantees for Russia, which were badly received in Kiev and Eastern Europe. “I think we shouldn’t make big cases, try to see controversy where there isn’t any”he said upon his arrival at the EU-Balkans summit in Tirana. “I have always said the same thing, that in the end, in the peace talks, there will be territorial subjects on Ukraine and they belong to Ukrainians and there will be collective security subjects throughout the region”He added. “It’s the same thing I’ve said from the beginning, the same thing we worked on in February, March and discussed”he continued, referring to attempts, notably by him during a meeting with Vladimir Putin on Feb. 7 in the Kremlin, to give assurances to Russia about the presence of NATO on its borders to try to avoid a war in Ukraine.
Mr Macron explained on Saturday that he traded with the American president, Joe Biden, on “the security architecture we want to live in tomorrow”referring to the fact that it would be necessary to give “guarantees for its own safety to Russia the day it returns to the table” negotiations. “One of the essential points is the fear that NATO will arrive at its doors, it is the deployment of weapons that can threaten Russia”he later explained on the French channel TF1.
These statements have aroused criticism in Ukraine and in some Eastern European countries, which have particularly strong attitudes towards Russia and accuse Macron of being too lenient or of making too many overtures towards Moscow. “Does anyone want to provide security guarantees to a terrorist and murderous state? »the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Oleksi Danilov, launched on Twitter talking about it “carpet diplomacy”.
For Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz, Mr. Macron “he makes a mistake saying what he says” and the West must abide by aa “isolation policy” from Moscow. “Vladimir Putin has a mental structure which means that every attempt at contact, at peacemaking, strengthens him psychologically”he hammered in an interview on RMF radio.
This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister of Latvia Artis Pabriks in Financial Times than the idea of u200bu200bgiving security guarantees to Russia “it is tantamount to falling into the trap of Putin’s narrative that the West and Ukraine are responsible for the war”. The solution to the Ukrainian conflict will be achieved by offering “security guarantees for Ukraine”EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday, adding that for “We’ll talk about Russia later”.
