meeting between Macron and Putin amid the conflict in Ukraine

A one-hour interview between the French and Russian presidents, Friday January 28, with one challenge: to defuse the crisis around Ukraine. Talking with Vladimir Putin, whatever the difficulties, has been Emmanuel Macron’s credo for almost five years. Barely elected, the French president had received his Russian counterpart in Versailles, in May 2017. He had taken the opportunity to make some clarifications: the French head of state had questioned the attempts to destabilize two Russian media in presidential campaign.

Two years later, in the summer of 2019 at Fort Brégançon, annoyed by French criticism of human rights in Russia, Vladimir Putin counterattacked by pointing the finger at the management of the Yellow Vests crisis. The more the months pass, the more the subjects of litigation have multiplied: the poisoning of the Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny, the sending of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group to the Central African Republic then to Mali and finally the threat of a military operation in Ukraine. . In five years, Emmanuel Macron has not obtained much from Vladimir Putin.