Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech on Wednesday 31 May at the Globsec forum in Bratislava, Slovakia, focusing on regional security issues, a first for a French president, one month before the NATO summit in Vilnius on 11-12 July.
"It is a question of sending clear signals on our determination to support Ukraine in the long term and also of returning to the future of Europe, the European Union and our continent, particularly in terms of security," summarizes the Elysee.
"This is a part of Europe that is obviously under great tension at the moment because of the situation in Ukraine and for which the NATO summit is the immediate strategic horizon," said an adviser to the French president.
In Vilnius, NATO heads of state and government must reaffirm their political and military support for Ukraine, which has been plagued for 15 months by a Russian offensive that is also worrying neighbouring countries that have emerged from the Soviet glacis.
"We must remain united ... There is no room for compromises and grey areas," Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told his French counterpart at the Elysee Palace.
Emmanuel Macron has bristled more than once his peers by suggesting not to "humiliate" Russia and to grant it, just like Ukraine, "security guarantees" at the end of the war so as not to repeat the mistakes of 1918 that led to the advent of Nazi Germany.
With AFP
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