The former Minister of Defense judges on franceinfo that “since the Minsk agreements, nothing has progressed significantly.”
Article written by
Published
Reading time : 1 min.
Emmanuel Macron “didn’t pass yet” his diplomatic mission, but “at least he hired him, which is what we were all waiting for”, underlined Tuesday February 8 on franceinfo Gérard Longuet, former Minister of Defense, while Emmanuel Macron met the German Chancellor after having discussed successively with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President. The Head of State claims to see “concrete solutions” to the Russian-Western crisis linked to Ukraine thanks to the commitment obtained, according to him, from Vladimir Putin that there will be no“climbing” additional. The Head of State thinks “possible to move the negotiations forward” peace between Russia and Ukraine.
>> Crisis in Ukraine: follow the latest information in our live
“The French president had a moral and practical obligation to meet Putin to discuss the spirit of the Normandy format, that is to say the Minsk agreements which had brought Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine closer together. , on a possible future”, emphasizes Gérard Longuet. According to him, “this future, we have to recognize that since the Minsk agreements, nothing has progressed significantly”. He regrets that Ukraine “does not plan to implement decentralized measures that would allow Russian-speakers in Ukraine to save their situation.”
Gérard Longuet observes that Russia has “hard to accept the European fact, which is nevertheless the reality with which we live”. For him, Vladimir Putin should “realize that Europeans exist”. If the Russian president accepted this idea, “no doubt we would have more freedom vis-à-vis the United States of America”. The former Minister of Defense believes that “the tone of many European countries” in this Russian-Ukrainian crisis “is given by Joe Biden”. He claims that the US President “gives the feeling of accepting the conflict between Europe and Russia, whereas our objective interest is to have peaceful, constructive relations with Russia, which is our immediate neighbor and which, for Germany by example, is its main supplier of energy.”