• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Emmanuel Macron’s pivot to Russia sparks EU unease

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Aburst of diplomatic activity by French president Emmanuel Macron to repair the EU’S frayed relations with Moscow has triggered alarm in other European capitals, where suspicion of Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin runs deep.

Mr Macron’s immediate aim has been to broker talks between Mr Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, the new Ukrainian president, to try to end the Russian-backed separatist war in eastern Ukraine. A peace summit, the first in three years, is expected in Paris this month following last week’s exchange of prisoners by Kiev and Moscow.

But the French leader has a broader ambition — to strengthen European ties to Russia to secure Moscow’s co-operation in other international crises, in particular the dangerous dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic error, because we will push Russia either into an isolation that increases tensions or into alliances with other great powers such as China,” the French leader told a gathering of his country’s ambassadors in August. “[T]he European continent will never be stable or secure if we don’t pacify and clarify our relations with Russia.”

Like US leader Donald Trump, Mr Macron — who hosted Mr Putin at the French presidential retreat of the Fort de Brégançon ahead of last month’s G7 summit — envisages the eventual return of Russia to the group of leading industrialised economies, from which it was excluded after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

His diplomatic outreach is based on the conclusion that “it’s absurd to have relations with Moscow that are worse than they were during the Cold war”, said Thomas Gomart, director of the French Institute of International Relations.

But some of France’s allies — notably Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the Baltic states — are wary, and several want to maintain or reinforce EU sanctions against Russia imposed over Crimea.

Norbert Röttgen, head of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, accused Paris of failing to co-ordinate with Berlin or other EU capitals. “The problem is that you’re rewarding Putin even though he hasn’t moved an inch on anything,” he said. “There has been no change in Russian policy. It’s a real validation for Putin. He does nothing and still there’s this rapprochement from Europe.”

But Nils Schmid, foreign affairs spokesman for the SPD, the junior partner in Ms Merkel’s coalition, said: “This is part of a co-ordinate approach . . . Germany and France are definitely pulling in the same direction on this, although France does it more bombastically.”

Poland, where historical suspicion of Russia has been exacerbated by Moscow’s meddling in Ukraine, has also criticised the French strategy.

“Many countries, especially those that are not Russia’s closest neighbours, are keen to ignore the fact that Russia has not really changed its ways in the Ukrainian conflict,” said Pawel Jablonski, an adviser to Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki. “We have no illusions about [Russia].”