The phone call, at midday, lasted 1h30, Thursday March 3. And it was Vladimir Putin who called. Said like that, it could make you optimistic. Especially since the two men, certifies the Elysée, continue to address each other, through interpreters. Moreover, the day before, during his speech, the French president had assumed his decision to continue to speak with his Russian counterpart. Maintain the thread of the dialogue. Of which act. And this is the 13th exchange between the two men since mid-December. But everything we know of this phone call shows that it is a dialogue of the deaf.
Vladimir Putin repeated that he wanted to go, according to the Élysée, “until the end”. He claimed that Russian military operations were taking place “according to plan”. He accused the Ukrainians of war crimes, and reiterated his usual speech: we are here to “denazify Ukraine”, Westerners are responsible. He is willing to negotiate, but only on his terms. Opposite, Emmanuel Macron replied that he was making a serious mistake about the nature of the Ukrainian regime, that the sanctions were going to increase, that Russia was going to be more and more isolated and weakened. And that Moscow’s terms of negotiation were unacceptable. And the most surreal thing about all of this is that it all takes place via familiarity. This gives for example, still according to the Élysée: “Vladimir, you’re telling yourself stories talking about denazification, you’re looking for a pretext”.
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Result of the races, the French president therefore emerged pessimistic from this interview. At the Élysée, as at the Quai d’Orsay, it is now clearly believed that “the worst may be yet to come”. The Élysée also thinks that Vladimir Putin’s objective is now to conquer all of Ukrainian territory. That is 600,000 km2, a little more than the area of France. The hypothesis, a time envisaged of a more modest objective (controlling only the East of the country, by widening the perimeter of the separatist zones from Donbass to the Russian border), this initial intention attributed to Putin is largely exceeded. And this analysis is very simply based on an objective fact: the Russian offensive is coming from all sides, from the North towards Kharkiv and Kiev, from the East via the Donbass, from the South and Crimea, towards Mariupol on one side , potentially Odessa on the other. The hypothesis of landing by sea, to the south in the Black Sea, is plausible. Since four landing ships have been identified in the area. The worst-case scenario is also the potential use of dirty weapons. And we can’t help but also think of the enormous danger linked to the sarcophagus of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant north of Kiev.
This scenario of a desire for total conquest of Ukraine is not a surprise. Vladimir Putin, on this point, does what he says. He considers Ukraine as Russian land, which must therefore be “denazified” and demilitarized. It is, Emmanuel Macron said it on Wednesday and he was right, a revision of history, since Ukraine has experienced multiple influences over the centuries, not just Russian. And that the desire for independence dates back at least two centuries. But Putin is in a spirit of conquest. And for him Ukraine is its “strategic depth”, a kind of buffer zone to protect Russia from the West. It is in any case the idea that he sells to the Russian population. So it’s no surprise.