"The time has come, the time is ripe to work to reduce the mistrust" with Russia, launched Monday, September 9 in Moscow the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, against the backdrop of appeasement of relations advocated by the French President Emmanuel Macron. "We came to propose (...) a new agenda of confidence," said the head of the French diplomacy.
Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke at the end of a meeting in the "2 + 2" format, a first since 2012 but especially since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which has plunged the world into an atmosphere of Cold War. Along with French Defense Minister Florence Parly, he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
"A strong diplomatic signal"
Relations between the European Union and Russia, which have been targeted by heavy Western sanctions since 2014 due to the annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula and its role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, remain at a very low level. To warm relations, Emmanuel Macron received Vladimir Putin in August, just before the G7, in the summer residence of the French presidents of southern France. He pleads for a normalization of relations with Moscow, which he says he wants to anchor to Europe despite disagreements on several important issues.
"We do not always have the same vision," noted Florence Parly Monday, but "it is important to talk to each other, to avoid misunderstandings, friction". "The quality of our exchanges", which, according to her, included the situation in Ukraine and the crisis in Syria, "suggests to me that we may be on the right track".
Towards a peace summit for Ukraine
For his part, Sergei Lavrov praised from the beginning of the interview "the initiatives" of France, ensuring that a "strengthening of Russian-French cooperation on the international scene (...) fully corresponds to the position of the President Putin and the interests of Russia ".
These talks in Moscow come after a telephone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron, who notably welcomed the exchange of 70 prisoners intervened the day before between Ukraine and Russia as a step towards peace. An exchange called "good sign" by Sergei Lavrov who expressed the hope that "Russian-Ukrainian relations will normalize".
In this context, a so-called "Normandy" peace summit, which brings together German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French, Russian and Ukrainian heads of state - Volodymyr Zelensky - with a view to finding a way out of the Ukrainian conflict, could also be organized. in September in Paris, a first for three years.
"I see that there is a window of opportunity" for peace in Ukraine, said Monday Jean-Yves Le Drian. "All this creates a state of mind, we must now strengthen it, fertilize it, and that is why we believe that a 'Normandy Summit' initiative would be appropriate in the coming weeks," he said. he continued while emphasizing that it is too early to evoke a lifting of the economic sanctions imposed on Russia.
With AFP