We all remember the French President travelling to Moscow in early February 2022, sitting at a very, very long table in the Kremlin, and trying to prevent the major Russian assault against Ukraine, which then started on 24 February that month. For many years before, Macron, like the German chancellors Merkel and Scholz, had engaged in a close dialogue and “peace negotiations” with the Russian president, hoping to stop the Russian aggression against Ukraine, which had already started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas.
Macron flexes his muscles
Finally, in March 2024, Macron publicly declared that he didn’t want to exclude the option of stationing Western troops in Ukraine. In immediate response, several Western leaders, both in NATO and the EU, particularly the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, distanced themselves from that statement. Scholz, however, inadvertently acknowledged the fact that Britain and France have already stationed military advisors in Ukraine to help its self-defence.
On 19 March 2024 photographer Soazig de la Moissonniere, obviously authorised by the Elysee Palace, published her photo, showing the French president as a boxer, hitting a sandbag. Peace lovers, feminists and many others all over Europe criticised or ridiculed the French “male chauvinist”. The journalist Mary Dejevsky, whom in a previous article I have called a Putin fellow-traveller, criticised him saying: “Macron the Boxer is playing a dangerous game with Putin”. Not surprisingly, the Kremlin was quick to warn against starting WWIII by stationing Western troops.
To clarify, the French president did not propose to station Western troops, he just wanted to keep all options open and thereby deter the Russian president from escalating the war he had started. In the past, Putin himself had posed as a fighter on various pictures, thereby trying to convey the image of a fearless warrior. Macron, it seems, has finally come around to understand the real nature of this Russian serial killer president – as I wrote before: a man acting like a completely ruthless, immoral Mafia boss.
If you cannot catch or immobilise serial killers and Mafia bosses, there is only one option to deal with them: you have to deter them in a way they really do understand – that there are limits and if you don’t accept them you will suffer. This, it seems to me, is the message of Macron’s boxer picture: ‘EU-rope’ will not let Ukraine die, it will fight for its survival.
Macron’s neighbours
The British in their “ambivalent love” with their neighbour across the channel, have shown some similar determination to help Ukraine. Actually, this is the only political act for which I can praise PM Boris Johnson: his quick decision to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons. Unfortunately, the UK is preparing for the next parliamentary election this year and the public seems not to give enough attention to the ongoing war. Still, I’m confident that Putin understands the UK’s (limited, but still effective) nuclear deterrence capabilities.
It is high time that all free European nations, inside or outside the EU, mobilise their capabilities to effectively help Ukraine to push back the Russian assault. Never forget how the Soviet Union collapsed: it was the years long war in Afghanistan which the Soviet army could not win and the massive decline of the oil and gas prices which led to the actual Soviet bankruptcy. The billions of Russian assets in the West should not only be frozen but now used to finance massive arms deliveries to Ukraine, the rebuilding of damaged or destroyed infrastructure and the compensation for the victims of Putin’s war crimes. The Western countries should also hasten to turn to renewable energy (solar, wind etc.) to drastically minimise the world’s demand for oil and gas and thereby help cutting the Russian income from its energy resources.
Macron’s real message
Putin, having witnessed, as a KGB agent, the collapse of the Soviet Union during his time in Dresden in the then GDR, would understand that this would mean the end of his rule. And this is how we should understand Macron’s Churchillian message!
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