On the night between Thursday and Friday, in the excited hours that saw the emergence of the agreement in the EU on the common debt to support Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron explained that, in the event of failure of American mediation in Florida, it would be the Europeans who would have to talk to the Kremlin.
Macron’s message that reaches Moscow
That passage from his press conference, received with some distraction in Europe, instead struck a chord in Moscow. “Putin is ready for dialogue,” announced Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.
The Kremlin opens: “Putin is ready for dialogue”
And in a few hours, the scenario of negotiations on Ukraine between now and the next few weeks has changed. «Macron said he was ready to talk to Putin. It is probably very important to remember what the president said during his annual press conference last Friday: he expressed his willingness to dialogue with Macron”, explained Peskov just as, in Miami, the hypothesis of a three-way table, between the USA, Russia and Ukraine, was waning.
The confirmation of the Elysée and the hypothesis of a direct interview
Peskov’s words were followed by those of the Elysée, according to which “now that the prospect of a ceasefire and peace negotiations is becoming clearer, it is once again useful to talk to Putin”.
Paris gave neither a timescale nor a choreography to the future dialogue with the Russian president, but stated that the terms of the meeting will be organized “in the next few days”. In theory it is therefore possible for the comparison to take place in person.
A potentially disruptive turning point in European strategy
And, in the European strategy on the Ukraine front, the novelty in this case would have a disruptive impact. The reasons for Macron’s change, for now, can only be hypothesized. The French president’s move certainly follows the EU’s desire – and the Coalition of the Willing – to have a front row seat in the negotiations, given the belief that Ukraine’s security concerns the entire continent.
The Germany factor and intra-European tensions
But there could also be intra-European dynamics behind Macron’s choice. Faced with the activism of Friedrich Merz since he has been at the helm of Germany, France in recent months has seemed to be a little on the sidelines, also weakened by internal political instability.
The Financial Times, reviewing Thursday’s European Council, underlined France’s decisive role in the black smoke that emerged over the use of Russian assets. “Macron betrayed Merz,” a senior diplomat present in the rooms of the Europa Building explained to the British newspaper. Therefore, a hypothetical meeting with Putin would bring Paris back to the center of European diplomacy, to the detriment of Berlin.
Trump’s weight and European strategic autonomy
Then there is the Donald Trump factor which, perhaps, weighed on the Elysée’s choices. Brussels’ total closure to dialogue with the Kremlin risks overshadowing the interests of EU countries in Ukraine just as Trump never misses an opportunity to attack Brussels. A strategically and militarily autonomous Europe – Macron’s old obsession – cannot fail to deal first-hand with even the worst of adversaries.
European silence and the risk of new fractures
Macron’s move, for now, has been met with silence not only from the EU Commission, but also from other European leaders. The Elysée explained that it will “act in transparency”, but the risk that a possible conversation between Paris and Moscow divides Europe is high.
Zelensky observes, but the precedent weighs
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, has never viewed such attempts in a bad light. Whether all this brings peace closer remains to be seen. Macron himself had a telephone conversation with Putin last July, the first in three years. The results of that conversation, on the front of the war in Ukraine, were nil.