In a documentary broadcast on the French public service television channel France 2 on Thursday night – and whose content was partially leaked in advance – we get to follow Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to speak Russian President Vladimir Putin “to the right”.
One of the conversations is reproduced in its entirety. It was held just four days before the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, and the documentary team was given unique access to a historical exchange of views.
Macron had just returned from a mediator’s trip to Moscow and Kyiv, where he was forced to sit at the short end of Putin’s long meeting table – a picture that quickly spread around the world.
– Since our last conversation, the tensions have only increased, Macron states at the beginning.
The tone is informal. They dove each other.
Call each other “Emmanuel” and “Vladimir”.
It is unclear if Vladimir Putin is aware that a documentary filmmaker may listen to the conversation. But the Russian president says, as so many times before, that the escalation at the border is President Zelensky’s fault.
– Emmanuel, I do not understand what your problem is with the separatists. In any case, they have – at our advice – done everything necessary to initiate a constructive dialogue with the Ukrainian authorities.
Macron promises to talk to Zelensky again, but urges Russia to start withdrawing its troops from the border with Ukraine:
– In concrete terms, I propose a meeting with President Biden in Geneva in the coming days. I spoke to him last Friday night and asked for permission to suggest this. He said I can tell you he’s ready. President Biden has ideas on ways to credibly reduce the situation, and how to take your demands into account and discuss the NATO issue and Ukraine. So: which date suits you?
Putin’s response is evasive.
– Emmanuel, let me suggest that we change the order of precedence here. The meeting must first be prepared. Not until after that can we talk – because if you just meet like that, to talk about everything and nothing, we will still be blamed for everything.
Macron insists on a summit and finally manages to get a “yes in principle” – but without a nailed-down date.
By then, Putin probably knows that the invasion will begin four days later.
– In order not to hide anything from you, I want to tell you that I wanted to play ice hockey and talk to you from the hockey arena right now. I will call my advisers now, says Vladimir Putin before the conversation ends.
The documentary – and not least the conversation with Putin, as well as the Swiss newspaper Le Temps gained access to – provides an unusual insight into diplomacy at the highest level.
But perhaps more interesting is why the French president’s staff agrees to it being announced – also in the middle of the G7 summit in Germany.
A certain element of “mea culpa” can be sensed.
In recent months, Macron has received harsh criticism for his many and largely fruitless talks with Putin, and for his statements that Russia must not be “humiliated” if a lasting peace is to be reached.
In Kyiv, it has been interpreted as an opening to allow Russia to retain parts of its military conquests. At the same time, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come to be seen as Ukraine’s best friend in Europe – something the French have not been entirely comfortable with.
Now a change in tone has taken place. The Elysee Palace is now pushing for Ukraine “to win the war” – not just, as previously stated, for Russia “not to win anything”. It is also believed that Russia must withdraw from “the entire territory of Ukraine”.
The shift came just before Macron’s trip to Kyiv, along with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Documentary filmmaker Guy Lagache was allowed to ride the train to Kyiv on 16 June.
“We did not succeed in persuading Putin – he invaded Ukraine,” Macron said in the documentary, reports Le Point.
– I thought it would be possible to find a way out by building trust and intellectual conversations, Macron admits on the train to Kyiv.
According to Macron himself, the turning point was for him the Russian massacre in Butja.
– After that I have talked much less with him, Macron says about his contacts with the Russian president.
If Putin was unaware that he was filmed by a film crew during the talks in February, it can probably be assumed that there will be significantly fewer talks – at least less trusting ones – between the two leaders in the future.
And that leads to what is really the big news in this story: that the President of France has finally seemed to have lost faith that dialogue is a viable path with Vladimir Putin.
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