On September 22, 2006, the former French president decorated his Russian counterpart to celebrate the “friendship” between the two countries. Today, with the war in Ukraine, the context has changed a great deal.
A cumbersome decoration. In 2006, Jacques Chirac presented the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor to Vladimir Poutine, the highest distinction awarded by the French Republic. Sixteen years later, in the midst of the war waged by Russia against Ukraine, the question of withdrawing this medal from the Russian president arises. Without taking a clear position, Emmanuel Macron did not rule out this hypothesis.
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The ceremony took place discreetly on September 22, 2006, at the Elysée Palace. Under the crackling of a few flashes, President Chirac removes a small red ribbon from his jacket, says a few words, then hangs the decoration on Vladimir Putin’s jacket. The French media were not informed of the holding of this ceremony. Without the presence of a photographer and a camera provided by the Kremlin, the scene would have left no trace.
A “totally private” ceremony
The event was not included in the forecasts of Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the AFP correspondent accredited to the Elysée Palace learned the news after the fact, as reported at the time by the program Stopping on images on France 5. The journalist relays the information well in the evening, but it will be very little taken up, for lack of images. The latter will arrive a little later via Russian television, which will not fail to underline the honor rendered to the Russian president.
To justify this lack of transparency, the Elysée evokes a “completely private and therefore unofficial ceremony”, as Freeze Frames reports. But the discretion of Chiraquian power can also be explained by the context of the time. In 2006, Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism was already denounced by opponents and NGOs, as evidenced by the Reporters Without Borders press release, three days after the announcement of this decoration: “That a predator of freedom of the press be raised to the dignity of Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, is an insult to all those who, in Russia, fight for the defense of the freedom of the press, the freedom to be informed and for the existence of an effective democracy in this country.”
“The choice of the French authorities to award the Legion of Honor to Vladimir Putin brings a shocking guarantee to his policy.”
Reporter without bordersin a press release in 2006
Why did the Elysée then choose to honor a contested head of state? The spokesperson for the presidency explained at the time that “Vladimir Putin’s contribution to the friendship between Russia and France” motivated the presentation of this distinction.
A long-standing “custom”
The Order of the Legion of Honor, instituted in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, is based on clear rules. In the traditional circuit, the ministers propose names having rendered service to the general interest or to the interest of France. The applications are then studied by the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor and the President of the Republic decides at the end of the race.
But there is also another circuit. “The second vocation of the Legion of Honor is to support the foreign policy of France”explains the Chancellery of the Legion of Honor. Napoleon had already implemented it, but this custom of honoring people in the context of diplomatic relations dates back even to the Middle Ages.
“In this context, we do not reward the merits of the person, but we will signify the existence of diplomatic ties with another country.”
The Chancellery of the Legion of Honorat franceinfo
For these diplomatic decorations, the President of the Republic, as Grand Master of the Legion of Honor, decides alone on the awarding of the distinction and informs the Grand Chancellor. When it comes to decorating foreigners, no communication or publication in the Official Journal is planned, specifies the chancellery.
An “excellent” relationship at the time
In September 2006, Vladimir Poutine is in France on the occasion of a tripartite summit between France, Germany and Russia organized in Compiègne. As said at the time The world, it is in particular a question of reassuring the Europeans about the new participation of a Russian bank within the aeronautics and defense group EADS (now Airbus). At the end of the reign of Jacques Chirac, France and Russia therefore maintain cordial relations. During his speech at the tripartite summit, the French president even mentions bilateral relations “excellent in all respects, especially in the fields of energy, infrastructure or aeronautics”.
“After the referendum on the European Constitution [en 2005], Russia, it was not the subject. We were mainly talking about the relaunch of the Franco-German dialogue to put European construction back on track”recalls Laurent Vigier, adviser to the Elysée between 2003 and 2007.
“In 2006, we are in a bit of a normalization phase with Russia.”
Laurent Vigier, former counselor at the Elyséeat franceinfo
Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Poutine in particular brought about a rapprochement thanks to their common opposition on the war in Iraq in 2003. Russia is a member of the G8, this club which brings together the richest countries on the planet, and in 2006 even organized the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg. Moscow therefore does not present the same threat as today in the eyes of Westerners. “The new Member States of Eastern Europe obviously have bad memories of the communist period, but they are in the EU and in NATO”explains Laurent Vigier.
However, the tensions between Europe and Russia arise shortly after, under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2007, Vladimir Putin delivered a meaningful speech at the 58th edition of the Munich Security Conference, where he attacked American hegemony and the NATO membership of Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic countries in 2004. “It is a provocation that undermines mutual trust and we can legitimately ask ourselves against whom this enlargement is directed”, explains the Russian president. Then in 2008, the Russian intervention in Georgia opened a new cycle of diplomatic crises between Moscow and the European Union.
Fifteen years later, Vladimir Putin is still decorated with his Legion of Honor. Emmanuel Macron, who recently presented the same distinction to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has the option of withdrawing this honor from the Russian President. Questioned by journalists after a European summit in Brussels on February 9, the President of the Republic did not exclude it, but temporized. He referred to decisions “always heavy with meaning” and that it is a question of taking “good time”.