Emmanuel Macron is not optimistic about an imminent diplomatic settlement of the war in Ukraine.

The Head of State indeed explained on Tuesday that he believed “rather little in our collective ability to put [Vladimir Putin] around a negotiating table in the short term”.

According to him, the master of the Kremlin has indeed "decided that he will not stop" in Ukraine because "he needs a military victory for himself" even if he "has realized that Ukraine does not 'was not going to submit'.

In this context, the city of Mariupol, on which the Russian army is focusing, "is perhaps a point of fixation because it is a symbol of Ukraine which refuses to him", estimates the president in a interview published by the weekly

Le Point

.

By concentrating the offensive on the Donbass, the Russian president seeks to “achieve a victory and aim for a glorious military parade on May 9, a very important date for him and for Russia”.

Macron wants to maintain the dialogue

Emmanuel Macron also justifies his numerous telephone exchanges with the Russian president: “If he no longer speaks to anyone, then we do not know how far he can go.

It's my obsession with him, I tell him every time.

When you enter the cycle of violence, the hardest thing is to stop.

The danger is the tipping point into the irreversible”.

Asked about the reasons that led his counterpart to invade Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron believes that his “resentment has metabolized into paranoia.

And Putin's isolation has only made things stronger since the 2014 sanctions. The role of Covid should not be underestimated either (…) for many leaders who were already on the edge of loneliness ( …) He found himself in Sochi for months, he locked himself up, he rubbed shoulders less with other reasonings”.

He also thinks that Vladimir Putin “respects France and makes a distinction with the rest of the West”.

But “he really has the conviction, which has been in the Russian mind for decades, that his main subject is with the Americans”.

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