The French President was recently asked by regional newspaper journalists whether the Ukraine war could escalate.

The situation is worrying, Emmanuel Macron replied.

"I no longer count the conversations I've had with Vladimir Putin since December." It was around a hundred hours, "in transparency" and at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Then Macron dressed a view that is also widespread in Germany in the formula that one should “not humiliate Russia so that when the fighting stops, we can build a way out through diplomatic channels”.

The idea behind this is to build golden bridges for the Russian President in order to free himself from a self-imposed “isolation”, which Macron also spoke of.

"Calls not to humiliate Russia,

can only humiliate France and any other country that makes them,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted.

"Because it is Russia that is humiliating itself." Rather, Russia must be put in its place in order to "create peace and save lives."

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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The statement, also made by Macron, that France's role is that of a mediator, is in conflict with the arms deliveries, which also come from France to Ukraine.

These include Milan anti-tank missiles and self-propelled, highly mobile Caesar howitzers.

According to Ukrainian information, the latter were used for the first time against Russian positions in the Donbass at the end of May.

According to an announcement last week, Kyiv is to receive Himars multiple rocket launchers from the United States.

Due to the range of the missiles supplied, which, according to American statements, should be 80 kilometers, they should allow Ukraine to hit Russian positions without coming within range of the enemy artillery.

The same applies to the M270 multiple rocket launcher system, which Great Britain now wants to give to Ukraine.

Threat only upon request

Notably, Putin seems intent on downplaying the importance of such shipments.

"There is nothing new there," he said on the state television program Moscow.

Kremlin.

Putin".

The Himars are only "analogue systems" to the weapons already used by Ukraine "Soviet, Russian production Grad, Smerch and Uragan".

Putting the range of the Himars missiles at between 45 and 70 kilometers, Putin said the United States and “some other countries” are only concerned with making up for Ukrainian losses.

This prolongs the “armed conflict”, but changes “essentially nothing”.

Only when asked by the state television reporter, who recorded the interview in a gloomy room in front of a map, did Putin utter his (much-quoted) threat: If Ukraine received longer-range missiles, Russia would "draw appropriate conclusions" from it and with its own Missiles, which are available in sufficient numbers, "deliver blows to objects that we have not dealt them to before".

That seems mild if you consider previous threatening gestures.

For a long time, even before the attack at the end of February, Moscow and Putin themselves had been claiming that NATO was overhauling Ukraine, even that it was “appropriated”.

At the end of April, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov named the Western arms deliveries on state television as one of the factors in the "serious, real danger" that a "third world war" could break out.

State television talk shows called for the deliveries not only to be attacked in Ukraine, where, according to Lavrov, they should be a "legitimate target" of attacks, but already on the territory of NATO countries.

On Monday, Lavrov said, merely referring to Moscow's narrative of the "neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv, that the greater the range of weapons that western Ukraine is supplying, "the further away we will move the line from which the neo-Nazis." threaten the Russian Federation”.

Not everything goes "according to plan"

Russia regularly claims to destroy western arms supplies.

On Sunday, the Ministry of Defense said again that air-to-ground missiles had been used on the outskirts of Kyiv to destroy (Russian-Soviet) T-72 tanks and other armored vehicles that had been delivered to Ukraine from Eastern European countries and housed in a train carriage repair shop had been.

From the Kiev side, only several hits were confirmed and that an attack on the railway infrastructure was intended.

Many in the West and in Ukraine hope that with the help of the new weapons, Kyiv will be able to gain decisive advantages in defense and, in the future, in the reconquest of territories occupied by Russia.

That Putin is now downplaying the importance of these weapons and comparing them to those used by Russia itself acts as a demonstration of confidence in victory and reinforces the message that everything is going “according to plan”.

There are some indications that Russia's Donbass offensive is experiencing setbacks, although the Himar and M270 systems may not yet be on site.

There are reports of a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the embattled city of Severodonetsk and of the death of another Russian general: According to information from Telegram channels close to the regime, Roman Kutuzov was killed in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk when he “led subordinates into an attack”.

The Ukrainian armed forces said on Sunday evening that Russian forces had suffered "significant losses" in an attempted storm in the area.

It is unclear whether Russia's military and intelligence services are giving Putin information that leaves him confident of victory, or whether the president himself, following obvious miscalculations at the beginning of the war, now has a clearer picture of the situation but prefers to continue to radiate optimism.