After July 7, Vladimir Putin will undoubtedly be able to save a few rubles: no more need for destabilization operations in Paris, France will have scuttled its Ukrainian policy on its own. In recent months, Emmanuel Macron has been blowing up the West’s red lines one by one: permission to strike Russian territory with Western weapons, sending fighter planes, military instructors on the ground… A wind of hope was finally blowing on kyiv, after a devastating winter. “For two years, we have been waiting for a European leader to stand up to Putin and bring the Westerners behind him,” confided a European diplomat. Macron had become this leader, and here he is paralyzed!
Certainly, the Head of State retains a “reserved domain” in foreign policy, enshrined in the customs of the Fifth Republic. The president represents France on the international scene and maintains direct links with other heads of state. At the Elysée, we maintain that, whatever the result of the legislative elections, Emmanuel Macron will be president until 2027, thus ensuring the continuity of French diplomacy.
Crash test for the president’s “reserved domain” principle
The Head of State and his own teams as a guarantee of stability, this was the message sent to the other chancelleries in recent days. Questioned on the subject on June 17, Volodymyr Zelensky remained diplomatic in public: “I spoke to Emmanuel Macron and he told me that nothing should change. I trust him.” Behind the scenes, the dissolution of the National Assembly and the French political slump constitute very bad news for kyiv.
Because the contours of the “reserved domain” are in reality extremely vague. Certainly, the president appoints ambassadors and signs international treaties. During previous cohabitations, the different parties in power agreed in the best interests of France on the conduct of diplomacy, with the appointment of consensual ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defense. The situation in 2024 appears radically different, with a potential full-scale crash test of the reserved domain principle. A government opposed to Emmanuel Macron will, without a doubt, create internal clashes on all external issues: Gaza, the European Union, NATO and of course Ukraine.
What will be France’s place in the world on the morning of July 8? And what will his position be on the war in Ukraine? The polls announce a rout for the presidential camp and no alternative will match the Ukrainian emergency. Who can believe that the National Rally will support kyiv, after recognizing the (illegal) annexation of Crimea and sending its elected officials to observe “the smooth running” of elections in Donbass?
Who can imagine that a party once financed by a Russian bank, whose candidate shook Putin’s hand in Moscow during the 2017 presidential campaign, will stand alongside Volodymyr Zelensky? The same candidate who defended, in her 2022 program (strangely offline since Tuesday), a security partnership with Russia… Accomplice of the Kremlin, internal enemy of NATO, a Bardella government will torpedo the Western coalition.
To the left of the left, pacifism consists of forgetting the Ukrainian victims
And the other side? Hardly better. If the Socialists and the Greens have lined up from the start behind unambiguous support for Ukraine, La France insoumise and the Communists oppose arms deliveries and voted unanimously against the bilateral security agreement passed with kyiv. Officially, these parties fear an “escalation” and call for “peace”…
Under the guise of pacifism, this left of the left despises the suffering of thousands of Ukrainian civilians living in the occupied territories, under the yoke of the Russian army, its torture and its rapes. For two years, the liberations of these areas by the Ukrainian army, from Boutcha to Kherson, have brought the same images, the same testimonies about the nightmarish daily life imposed by Putin’s forces. No longer supplying weapons to Ukraine is tantamount to abandoning them.
From the start of his invasion, on February 24, 2022, Putin was banking on the running out of steam in our Western societies, on the cozy comfort of our democracies, to win his war in the long term. Its victims deserve better, Ukraine deserves better. Our democracy deserves better.
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