L’Express: You were recently in Ukraine with a delegation from the France-Ukraine Friendship Group. How do you feel about the situation?
Benjamin Haddad: I was in kyiv for three days with a transpartisan delegation, made up of deputies from the LR, MoDem, Greens, RN and LFI. Even if we are not all aligned on the same positions, we sent a message of solidarity and friendship from the French people. Our interlocutors – from the president’s wife, Olena Zelenska to Deputy Prime Minister Olga Steganichyna – are all very grateful for the role played by France. We also met Alexandra Ustinova, the young opposition MP, who chairs the Arms Control Commission. She explained to us in detail how the Ukrainian administration ensures the traceability of all Western weapons entering Ukraine.
These arrive in a “hub”, where they receive a barcode. As soon as a weapon is damaged or lost, the information is entered into a database accessible to allied defense ministries: where was the weapon used? Is it damaged? If so, where is it repaired? Etc.
This work is essential. It should make it possible to avoid, at the end of the war, what happened after the Balkan War, when hundreds of thousands of weapons ended up in the wild.
Some European countries, Slovakia and Poland, announce that they will no longer give weapons to the Ukrainians. And recent statements from American Republicans, mired in a budgetary crisis, are hardly reassuring. Are we abandoning the Ukrainians?
The real test is now. We must hold on: Putin’s only hope is to see us grow tired and divided. In a war that promises to be long, the Ukrainians have the feeling, legitimate in my opinion, that they are being given the means to survive, but not to win. How much procrastination on tanks or fighter planes? Our strategy is the right one: to give the Ukrainians the means to defend themselves without going to war ourselves. But over the past year and a half, each new weapons system has led to excessively long hesitations. This also explains the difficulties of the counter-offensive, without air cover.
We must continue to send long-term signals of support to the Ukrainians. This is the whole point of the long-term security guarantees for Ukraine, which we are currently negotiating. They will make it possible to sustain military support. In this regard, we hope that a multilateral framework can ultimately be concluded within the framework of NATO, the only framework that will truly deter a future invasion. This is very important because on the other hand, the Russians think that time is on their side, especially when we see what is happening in the United States.
The European Union could, it is said, begin accession negotiations with Ukraine by the end of the year. What do you think ?
Long-term membership of the European Union and NATO is, in my opinion, fundamental – whatever the territorial configuration. Perhaps the status of certain Ukrainian territories will remain undetermined for a long time, but at least we will have a free Ukraine, resolutely oriented towards the United States, and which will be part of the Atlantic institutions. Above all, it would be a strategic defeat for Russia: whatever the territorial configuration, it will have lost Ukraine politically. Of course, considerable and long work remains to be done: fight against corruption, independence of the judiciary, market reforms. Let’s accompany them.
Is France helping Ukraine enough?
Yes, and Ukrainians are grateful. We must continue. Not only to help the Ukrainians, but to assert French leadership in Europe on security issues and ensure stability on the eastern flank of Europe. We defend our interests. And certainly, we are giving up arms stocks, but we have also passed an unprecedented defense budget, in this context of war in Europe, from which aid to Ukraine (which fits in an additional envelope). Let us not allow music to be installed that our armies emerge weakened from this effort.
We must now take a long-term approach. It is with this goal that the Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu took French defense manufacturers to Ukraine to move from a logic of selling equipment to direct orders from our industry.
Now let’s put the resources into it. The budgetary debate in the Assembly must be an opportunity to replenish, as last year, the support fund for Ukrainians which helps them place these orders. They used last year’s 200 million euros to buy radars, Caesar cannons and floating bridges. A majority of Assembly groups are in favor of renewing this support. Why not also create this type of instrument at European level? This is what we proposed with Nathalie Loiseau a few months ago.
It would be added to other devices…
Currently, Europe has two instruments: the European Peace Facility, which allows the EU to finance actions in the field of defense and the plan supported by Thierry Breton to accelerate European production of munitions. But we should also make progress on European defense. In this regard, the proposal by Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas on the creation of a large loan of 100 billion euros to finance the acquisition of European military equipment is absolutely fundamental.
Our partners join President Macron’s speech on defense Europe. They know that Trump is once again at the gates of power and that we Europeans are not ready for the consequences of such an earthquake. Besides, should we wait for Trump? The political crisis in the US Congress shows how tenuous American support is. But some of our neighbors are historically wary of France. Our firmness against Russia is the best way to convert them to our agenda on European sovereignty.
Another topic is currently rising in the West: what to do with the assets of the Russian Central Bank frozen following the invasion?
Nearly 200 billion euros of assets were blocked in Europe after February 24, 2022, and around a hundred billion in the United States. If, tomorrow, Russia accepted a peace agreement and reparations, the West would undoubtedly lift the sanctions, but the hypothesis is unlikely. The question therefore arises: what to do with these assets? There is debate. Some would like to seize them in full to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine. Others, like European Commission lawyers, suggest investing them and using the return on investment to finance the reconstruction of the country. In both cases, the reasoning is as follows: there is no reason, when we are sitting on 200 billion euros from Russia – the country responsible for the aggression -, to let the European taxpayer pay the bill alone. of the war.
This is an unprecedented situation and some are concerned about the precedent created. Could Beijing, for example, seize the American reserves it holds? Others then have a cautious legal reading of a problem that is above all strategic and political. It is up to us, in these conditions, to move forward, while respecting the rules of law. The Russian state has violated Article 51 of the United Nations Charter: it is responsible for this war. Other States must draw the appropriate conclusions from this. And act accordingly.