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Macron to call for European ‘strategic awakening’ after Ukraine invasion Negotiating with Putin may have to take priority over war crimes trial, says Macron
(about 11 hours later)
In speech in Bratislava, French president will warn of steady erosion of European strategic stability French president calls for ‘path to membership of Nato’ for Ukraine and reconciliation of east and west
Emmanuel Macron is to make a diplomatic push to reassure central and eastern European countries that France understands that the continent’s security environment has been permanently changed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It may not be possible to send Vladimir Putin to face war crime charges at The Hague if he is the only person with whom the west has to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, Emmanuel Macron has said.
Macron has often been viewed with suspicion across eastern Europe, especially in Poland, as someone who sees Russia as ultimately part of Europe’s security architecture and wants to use the war in Ukraine to boost European defence autonomy in a way that loosens Europe’s security ties to the US. In a wide-ranging speech at an EU leaders conference in Moldova, the French president also set out plans for a fast enlargement of the EU, reconciliation between the east and west of Europe and a clear path to Ukraine’s Nato membership.
In a speech to a security forum in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, on Wednesday, Macron will call for a “strategic awakening” and highlight the work France has done to protect Nato’s eastern flank, including posting 1,250 French troops in Romania and 300 in Estonia. He will also stress the French role in unlocking the supply of battle tanks to Ukraine. He insisted that Russia had lost all legitimacy, but said if the coming Ukraine offensive did not meet its military objectives there would have to be an assessment of the nature of future European support for Ukraine. At the same time he insisted that Ukraine was defending not just its own borders, but those of Europe.
At a meeting the following day in Moldova that he has largely engineered with fellow European leaders from inside and outside the EU – including Britain’s Rishi Sunak – he will stress France’s commitment to Ukraine’s victory and say he will not tolerate a frozen conflict. He also called for continuity in US policy towards Ukraine, but said the EU by strengthening its own defences had to prepare for the possibility that a Republican administration might be elected.
An Élysée official said: “What is striking is that it’s not the first, this is the third war that Russia has been waging in 15 years, with Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014, Ukraine again in 2022.” In the frankest remarks yet by a European leader about the need to negotiate with Putin, Macron said that “if in a few months to come we have a window for negotiations, the question will be arbitrage between a trial and a negotiation, and you have to negotiate with the leaders you have de facto, and I think negotiations will be a priority … You can put yourself in a position where you say: ‘I want you to go jail but you are the only one I can negotiate with’.”
The official accused Russia of “laying down its abusive demands in the draft treaties of late 2021, where Russia proposed nothing short of the full decoupling of European American security, the neutralisation of Ukraine and organising the vulnerability of the states neighbouring Russia – all claims which cannot be accepted.” He said that in the meantime evidence against Russia and its leaders should be assembled.
The Élysée pointed out that Macron had already sanctioned an increase of more than a third in France’s planned defence spending for 2024-30 compared with 2019-25. Macron sees the increase as part of a sea change in defence spending under way with no prospect of an end to the new cold war any time soon. Pressing his case for greater European defence spending and coordination, he said “our security and stability should not be delegated and left at the discretion of US voters”.
The president will argue that Europe, backed by EU funding, needs to do more to support its own armament production capacity and explore defence partnerships between member states. Referring back to his claim three years ago that Nato was in the throes of “brain death”, he said Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had been a wake-up call to which Nato had responded well. But he pointed out that some Nato members – without directly mentioning Turkey – were not imposing sanctions on Russia.
Macron is expected to warn of a deep and steady erosion of European strategic stability due to Russia’s successive withdrawals from nuclear arms control treaties, as well as the recent stationing of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus in defiance of the bargain struck in 1997. He acknowledged that in the past western Europe had not been sensitive to the requests of the east. “Some said you had missed an opportunity to stay quiet. I think we also lost an opportunity to listen to you. This time is over,” Macron said, to applause in the audience.
As part of the response, France and Germany will host a military conference on 19 June focused on a German proposal for a European “sky shield” initiative. France will contend that Europe and Nato need not just stronger air defence but a new deep precision strike capability. The Élysée said: “It is not enough to have shields, you also need swords.” He was alluding to a remark in 2003 by former French president Jacques Chirac, who said eastern European nations which sided with the US and Britain in their decision to invade Iraq that year, opposed by some major western allies including France and Germany, had missed a “good opportunity to stay quiet”.
The proposal for developing this long-range capability for Nato was recently discussed at a Franco-British summit in Paris in March. French sources said this showed how Macron does not insist that stronger European defence capabilities are solely structured around the EU. Referring to the division of Europe enforced in the east in the wake of the second world war, Macron said Europe must not allow eastern Europe to be kidnapped by Russia a second time, adding that the enforced estrangement had weakened the whole European family.
The meeting in Moldova of the new European Political Community (EPC), a Macron brainchild, will gather 47 European leaders from inside and outside the EU including Turkey. It will be the second such meeting of this fledgling group.
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The Élysée predicted that the family photo of so many European leaders showing their solidarity with two EU accession applicants – Ukraine and Moldova – would send a clear message to Russia. Macron predicted that the coming Nato summit in Vilnius in July would not be able to reach a consensus on Ukraine’s future membership of Nato, but said “we need to build something between security guarantees provided to Israel and full-fledged Nato membership. We need something tangible, clear and concrete. We need a path to membership”.
The re-elected Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is expected to attend the summit where he will be pressed to clarify his terms for lifting his veto on Sweden’s membership of Nato. France would like Sweden to be able to join Nato at the organisation’s Vilnius summit in July. The summit will also consider the next stage of Ukraine’s application to join Nato, something France does not favour for some time. He added that Ukraine must be given sufficient means to stop further aggression and “we must be able to guarantee they are tangible and sustainable”, because it was protecting Europe.
The EPC, due to meet twice a year, is still in its infancy and will focus on European security, connectivity, energy and cyberdefence. The next EPC will be hosted by Spain later this year and another next year by the UK. Each country, he said, should have a right to pick its allies. Russia’s invasion had been a geopolitical failure that had aggravated mistrust all its neighbours. “There is no space in Europe any more for imperialistic delirium,” he said.
But he also made an appeal to central and eastern European countries not to see greater European defence cooperation, spending and partnerships as a way of reducing Nato’s influence, insisting a strong European pillar in Nato was of benefit to everyone.