Jean-Marc Ayrault, Prime Minister during the annexation of Crimea by Russia in early 2014, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, estimated Sunday morning February 27 on franceinfo that Vladimir Poutine was “ready to go very far” after its first offensives in Ukraine.
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franceinfo: You met Vladimir Poutine for the first time in 2013. You say that he was already talking only about Ukraine. Did you imagine he could go this far?
Jean-Marc Ayrault : I never imagined Putin would go this far. But now that he has taken this major step, of waging war on a neighboring country which he considers a full member of Russia, it means that he is ready to go very far.
That is to say ? Could he go so far as to attack Georgia, Moldova?
For example, and why not further still. We must pay close attention to his speech a week ago. He explains that Ukraine is a fiction invented by Lenin, which is part of Russia. He also has demands for the old people’s democracies, like Poland, Bulgaria, the Baltic countries, Romania, to be disarmed and excluded from NATO. He has a conception of the world that is historical, and old, of the tsarist empire, augmented by the Soviet experience. But this is not for Putin a return to the time of the Cold War, with a status quo, without acting out. There, we moved on since he went on the attack.
Is this a test today for the European Union?
Yes, but contrary to what Vladimir Putin may have thought, who saw our weaknesses and our divisions, especially with the distance from the United States, the Europeans held on. Unity has been preserved and sanction measures have been taken and may be toughened. Clearly, this must have come as a surprise to Putin. But Europe must strengthen itself. Franco-German cooperation still has a lot of progress to make in terms of defence. In terms of armaments, for example, there are ongoing projects which must be speeded up.