• Moscow, Kiev, Berlin: Emmanuel Macron's program over the past two days has been very busy.

  • The fact that the President of the Republic is the first major Western leader received in Moscow, since the renewed tension between Russia and Ukraine, marks the weight of France in the discussions.

There was one thing for certain: Emmanuel Macron would not declare himself a candidate this beginning of the week.

The President of the Republic indeed had a busy diplomatic agenda with a visit to Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, and another to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev on Tuesday.

It is of course a question of trying to mediate while Russia threatens to invade its neighbor, by massing tens of thousands of soldiers at the border for several weeks.

If the diplomatic ballet has been intense between the powers for several weeks, it has so far put the European Union and France rather aside.

The United States has been largely on the move, and again a month ago during a new Biden-Putin meeting in Geneva.

Emmanuel Macron's double visit is therefore no small event from the point of view of the importance of France in this crisis.

Especially since the head of state was the first great Western leader to be received in Moscow on Monday since the renewed tension on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

"Emmanuel Macron goes to Moscow and Kiev with three hats: officially as French president, as current host of the ''Normandy format'' (which brings together the two belligerents, France and Germany, editor's note) and unofficially as a candidate, "explains Jean de Gliniasty, former French ambassador to Moscow and now consultant at Iris.

“Of course we matter”

Emmanuel Macron therefore went first to Moscow as French president.

And even if he did it before going to Kiev or having met Joe Biden, "it's natural", adds Jean de Gliniasty.

This observation, while Paris has taken some bad diplomatic blows in recent months, cannot be bad for the national ego.

In the aftermath of the rout in the Australian submarine affair, and when France suddenly appeared very small, the United States specialist Jean-Eric Braana recalled that, without of course being a great power, the France “is the fifth world power, it has a seat on the UN Security Council, it is a nuclear power… Of course we count.

»

The head of state may also find there the dividends of his policy of reaching out to the Russian president.

As soon as he took office in 2017, Emmanuel Macron had invited Vladimir Poutine to Versailles.

And the dialogue, never very productive, never stopped either.

Only, there, health crisis obliges, the two presidents had not seen each other physically for a long time.

“And Zoom meetings are not the same.

Especially with Russians, who need to feel and meet people.

And finally the President of the Republic uses all of this to “get his foot in the door” of a discussion where until then Europe had been sidelined.

No effect of and on the campaign

The problem of Paris, and Berlin where Emmanuel Macron will stop this Tuesday evening, is that it is much more Ukraine which does not really want to see them go into the loop.

Because it reactivates the "Normandy format", born of an informal meeting in 2014 during the commemorations of the Normandy landings, with Russia and Ukraine, of course, and therefore France and Germany.

It was the negotiations within this framework that led to the Minsk agreements.

“Ukraine signed these agreements in a moment of great weakness, Russia had just annexed Crimea.

Reactivating this format is reawakening the memory of these unpopular agreements”, analyzes Jean de Gliniasty.

Success or not, a priori nobody will blame Paris for not having tried something to avoid escalation.

But it escapes no one that the President of the Republic will soon enter the campaign.

And the visit to Moscow must also be seen in this light.

"Vladimir Putin is aware of this and he sees the polls which make Emmanuel Macron the favorite for the presidential election", notes the former French ambassador to Moscow.

Is this a problem for his future campaign?

Of course not for Maud Bregeon, spokesperson for LREM, who underlines that Emmanuel Macron “has always affirmed that he would be president until the end, he is a responsible president.

“Can it be positive?

Observers interviewed do not believe in the real importance of foreign policy in the campaign.

Unless a war breaks out,

they don't see the subject coming up in the campaign.

Diplomacy sucks.

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Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Poutine ready to “get to the bottom of things”

  • Diplomacy

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