Should we continue to discuss with Vladimir Putin as France, Germany and Italy stubbornly do, keep the link in the hope of negotiating, one day, the end of the war? Or, on the contrary, should Ukraine be armed more to enable it to impose itself militarily? In Europe this dividing line is accentuated. Emmanuel Macron, the main defender of “telephone diplomacy” spent hours and hours on the phone with the Russian president. 11 conversations since February 24, the day the war broke out, and there have been many more before that.
But these recurring calls, the last of which, Saturday May 28, in the company of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have not changed Vladimir Putin’s inflexible posture.
#UkraineRussiaWar Attempts at mediation between Moscow and kyiv have stalled. This weekend, President Emmanuel Macron and the Chancellor @OlafScholz had 1 interview with Vladimir Putin, urging him to start “serious direct negotiations” with kyiv. In vain. pic.twitter.com/ytJ2YOAhjR
– The Social Exchequer (@EchiquierSocial) May 30, 2022
“If diplomacy is measured by perseverance“, already wrote in April Roger Cohen in the New York Times“Macron is an outstanding diplomat, but if this diplomacy is evaluated on the concrete, the verdict is less favorable“.
The longer the conflict drags on, the less the results are there and the more Europeans there are to criticize the method: let’s stop, they say, cultivating the illusion of a compromise or trying to create a way out for Moscow.
The countries which are on this line are mainly the former countries of the communist bloc (with the exception of Hungary which is used to playing spoilsport, including Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who remains close to Vladimir Putin); these countries which reproach Paris and Berlin for having had too many qualms over arms deliveries and which fear – if Europe does not show itself firm enough – of being the next victims of the expansionist appetites of Russia.
In Estonia, the Chairman of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee even describes Macron and Scholz “brain dead”, taking up the formula of the French President on NATO. By doing so, “France and Germany pave the way for more violence from Russia”.
In Lithuania, a former prime minister called on the French and Germans to emulate the Lithuanians who, in just three and a half days, raised five million euros in fundraising to buy a state-of-the-art military drone for the army Ukrainian, a Byraktar TB2.
It took 3️⃣ days for Lithuanians to collect 5 mln euros to buy #Bayraktar for #Ukraine. Proud to be Lithuanian!
Hope to see Germans and French people to do the same. It’s more important than Scholz and Macron never ending phone calls to Putin! https://t.co/a7INKx5YjJ
— Andrius Kubilius (@KubiliusA) May 28, 2022
This gesture, according to him, is “more important than those endless phone calls to Putin !” In Bulgaria, the independent daily Sega draws a parallel with the Munich agreements of 1938, when France and the United Kingdom, in exchange for peace, agree to cede part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany, because Hitler demands self-determination Germans who live in the Sudeten mountains. “This is exactly what Ukraine fears today” writes the newspaper, taken up by Courrier International, which even speaks of “Munich smallpox”: “TO unlike monkeypox, that of Munich is indeed from a European strain and is spreading like wildfire among the European leaders”.
In fact, the peace plan proposed to the UN ten days ago by the head of Italian diplomacy proposed a ceasefire and a status of autonomy for Crimea and Donbass, which kyiv does not want. hear talking.
It is the return of an East-West divide within the European Union. We saw this in particular when Emmanuel Macron refused to integrate Ukraine too quickly into the Union: his proposal was well received in the West but denounced by the countries of Eastern Europe, which finally feel more in tune today with London and Washington than with Paris and Berlin, whose European leadership is weakened.
At the European summit in Brussels, Volodymyr Zelensky addressed European leaders by videoconference. He asked them to “show their strength“, since it is “the only argument Russia understands“. He also called on them to put an end to “their internal quarrels“.
I don’t think Scholz, Macron, and Draghi want Putin to win, not exactly. But they are afraid of Ukraine winning and the world changing, of becoming less relevant. A new European security structure won’t see them as leaders after their appeasement.
—Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) May 29, 2022
Another man is on the same line: Gary Kasparov. The former chess champion and Russian opponent who has taken refuge in the United States does not hesitate to point out European differences either. The “union,” he said, does not defend its values“.”A war for life and freedom has no place for friendly deals with aggressor dictators“.