Emmanuel Macron “found himself dividing Europe”, believes PS boss Olivier Faure

Invited Thursday on franceinfo, the boss of the PS, Olivier Faure, judges Emmanuel Macron’s posture on the subject of the war in Ukraine “irresponsible”.

“By showing its desire to possibly send ground troops” in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron “found itself dividing Europe and revealing the fact that no allied country has this intention”said, Thursday March 7, on franceinfo the first secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure, deputy for Seine-et-Marne, while the President of the Republic affirmed Thursday to the leaders of the political parties gathered at the Elysée that he there was not “no limit” neither “Red line” to France’s support for Ukraine.

“Where he thought he was creating deterrence by creating strategic ambiguity, as he said himself, he on the contrary gave a lot of clarity to Putin”, judge Olivier Faure. According to him, “we could have imagined that this possibility existed”but “now Putin knows that this possibility does not exist. So it was totally counterproductive.”

“Deterrence requires credibility”, believes Olivier Faure. During the meeting with the heads of political parties, Emmanuel Macron said, according to the boss of the PS, “that he wanted to consider everything, that it could be mine clearance and that it could be maintenance, but that in any case, he did not want to exclude anything because it was part of the balance of power with Vladimir Putin.” But Olivier Faure finds “irresponsible” the posture of the head of state, because, “by not having noted this position with the allies, he created a situation where all the others were obliged to withdraw because none of them wanted to enter into a spiral which would eventually lead to being considered as belligerent and to drag the continent, even the world, into a conflict of which no one knows what the consequences would be.

“Verbal escalation that is based on nothing”

Olivier Faure also denounces the comments of Emmanuel Macron who called on Ukraine’s allies to “don’t be cowardly” against Russia. “France is a modest contributor to the Ukrainian war effort. It is the 15th contributor at the level of the European Union, behind the United States, behind Germany, behind everyone”recalls the boss of the PS. “Wanting to give lessons in courage by calling your partners cowards even though you are making less effort than your neighbors is still quite daring. I remain measured.”

Olivier Faure denounces again “a form of verbal one-upmanship that is based on nothing.” “When you announce that you are going to send troops, you still have to have them and you still have to have the anointing of all the partners. Which is not the case.” If this has “reawakened the media debate”, the boss of the PS believes that this has “especially annoyed all European partners” but also “nourished the speech of Vladimir Putin who can now quite easily explain to his public opinion that there is a war going on in France and that we are the evil West, which is exactly the narrative that he has been feeding since years”.