With the commemoration ceremonies for the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Emmanuel Macron is at the center of the global diplomatic game. This Thursday, June 6 for D-Day, the Head of State will appear on the Normandy beaches in the company of his American counterparts Joe Biden and Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky. An important sequence for the French president.
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From our special correspondent in Normandy,
This Thursday, June 6, all eyes will be on Omaha Beach, the legendary landing beach, where Emmanuel Macron will give a speech to a few hundred-year-old veterans, the final witnesses of this liberating assault, to whom the President of the Republic will pay tribute. .
Also in front of an audience of heads of state and governments, Joe Biden in the lead who left the electoral campaign across the Atlantic, the time to honor the American soldiers and to extend this event with a state visit in France.
Memory
This moment of memory so as not to forget the united destinies of the countries allied against the Nazi occupier arrives while on the other side of Europe, Ukraine is seeking to free itself from the Russian invader. The presence of Volodymyr Zelensky this Thursday in Normandy gives these ceremonies a special tone. It will allow Emmanuel Macron to remember that peace can never be achieved.
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Eighty years after D-Day, the Head of State has an opportunity to put France at the forefront of support for Ukraine because, according to him, in Ukraine The security of France is also at stake. A message that he continues to hammer home in the European election campaign, which he will surely also reiterate during the television interview he will give this Thursday evening, at the risk of being accused of using the platform of Landing for electoral purposes.
In Saint-Lô, Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the “capital of ruins”
This Wednesday, June 5, Emmanuel Macron launched the commemoration ceremonies for the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings. The President of the Republic notably visited Saint-Lô, the “capital of ruins”, completely destroyed on June 6, 1944. In front of him, a choir from the primary schools of Saint-Lô gave voice. Children who embody hope at the moment when the Head of State came to pay homage to this martyred city.
On the night of June 5 to 6, 1944, a deluge of bombs fell on the city, leaving residents haggard the day after the bombing, as recounted by a Saint-Lois in a text read by an actor from the Comédie-Française : “ The commander, a pickaxe in hand, tries to free a 16-year-old boy, trapped under entangled beams. There are corpses everywhere in these ruins. I stay with the rescuers for a while and suddenly, near a section of wall, I hear faint cries: “Help !” I know of nothing more atrocious than this muffled cry, walled up like in a cellar. Whereas 20 meters of debris makes any intervention useless. »
It was in Saint-Lô that Emmanuel Macron wanted to express the recognition of the Nation to all these civilians who died so that the France is released: “ The summer of 1944 was that of 13,000 civilian deaths, missing during this battle, where the fate of the world was at stake. » For these commemorations, Emmanuel Macron wants to salute all the dimensions of the memory associated with Landing.
Listen to the report in Saint-Lô from our special correspondent