French President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants Moscow to “defeat” Ukraine while warning those who want to “destroy Russia first and foremost” will “never” be “France’s position”.
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“I want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine and I want Ukraine to be able to defend its position, but I am convinced that in the end it will not be decided militarily,” the French leader said in an interview with Journal du Dimanche, Le Figaro and France Inter and published on Saturday night.
“I don’t think, like some, that Russia should be completely defeated and attacked on its soil. Above all, these observers want to destroy Russia. That has never been France’s position and never will be,” he added.
These observers, he says, appear to be the ones who are particularly hardline in Eastern Europe, who in May 2022 had harshly criticized his comments that Russia should not be “humiliated”.
In that interview, conducted Friday night on the plane that was taking him back from Germany, where he was attending the annual Munich Security Conference, the French President reiterated his desire to promote a negotiated outcome.
Already in his speech in the Bavarian city, he felt that Russia should “fail” in Ukraine.
However, some observers had accused him of not going so far as to conjure up a necessary “defeat” for Moscow.
He also stated that it was necessary to “intensify” support for Kiev in order to seek “credible negotiations”.
“What is needed today is for Ukraine to lead a military offensive that disrupts the Russian front to trigger a return to negotiations,” he told the three media outlets.
In his opinion, “neither side can fully assert itself”, “neither Ukraine nor Russia, because the impact of the mobilization is not as great as expected and it itself has capacity limits”.
Emmanuel Macron also believes that “all options except Vladimir Putin within the current system” seem “worse” to him than the Russian president, alluding to tough guys like the head of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev or the head of the paramilitary group Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“Do we sincerely believe that after these years of hardening and full conflict, a democratic solution will emerge from the Russian civil society present on the ground? I really want it, but I don’t really believe in it,” he warned.