OhN JANUARY 16French President Emmanuel Macron announced he would send 40 additional long-range Scalp cruise missiles to Ukraine. Later that day, Russia bombed Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, claiming French mercenaries were based there and providing a list of names that the French military says is false. Soon after, the French discovered 193 websites created to undermine public support for Ukraine in France (as well as Germany and Poland), run by a Russian company based in Crimea. A few days later, Sébastien Lecornu, the French defense minister, said Russian air traffic controllers had threatened to shoot down a French plane patrolling over the Black Sea.
In recent months, France has documented an intensified Russian campaign to sow division, discredit the country and test its military. Russian security services, French sources say, ordered the Stars of David stencilled on the walls of Paris last October to stir up inter-religious tensions. In March, cyberattacks briefly took down some French government websites and hackers stole data from its employment agency. With added help from Russia apologists in France, Russian bots collaborated on scary stories about bedbugs in Paris, used a deepfake French news report to fabricate an alleged assassination attempt against Mr. Macron and spread false, vile rumors about his wife, Brigitte. .
This systematic targeting, say those close to the president, is at the origin of a change which continues to perplex many observers: the conversion of Mr. Macron from a leader who sought to dialogue with the Russian Vladimir Putin to the one of the most hawkish voices in Europe. The president who once urged his allies not to “humiliate” Russia has now called for Russia’s defeat, urged his allies not to be “cowardly” and warned that a Russian victory would mean “the end of security European”. Mr Macron has not spoken to Mr Putin since September 2022. On February 26, he refused to rule out sending ground forces to help Ukraine.
What explains this change? Basically, says Bruno Tertrais of the Institut Montaigne, a think tank, Mr. Macron was “attacked by reality.” Mr. Putin lied to him and played with him. The French president’s diplomatic efforts before the war were a failure, even though he knew at the time that they were high risk. The assassination of Alexei Navalny in February was a new shock. As a former minister said The worldMr Macron was “radicalized by disappointment”.
Ukraine’s difficulties on the ground, as well as the prospect of a new Donald Trump presidency, make resistance to Russia more urgent. This comes at a time when Mr Macron has already concluded, in a speech in Bratislava last May, that Ukraine’s integration into both the European Union and NATO this would in fact strengthen its European collective defense ambition, without diluting it.
“For decades, France believed that when it came to Europe, it was better to be smaller,” writes Célia Belin, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, in the American magazine Foreign Affairs. Russian aggression, she notes, has transformed the arguments in favor of EU. France’s ten-year security commitment to Ukraine is now enshrined in a bilateral agreement signed by Mr Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky in February. It is worth 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) in 2024 and includes a French promise to support Ukraine’s entry into the European Union. NATO.
Skeptics still question the sincerity of Mr Macron’s conversion, pointing to French efforts to cap Ukrainian agricultural exports. Fine words are one thing; one concrete action another. Figures from the German Institute in Kiel suggest that French bilateral military aid is only a fraction of that of Germany, although the latest figures only increase until mid-January. With a budget deficit in 2023 of 5.5% of GDPFrance is short of money, its army has little equipment in reserve, and its industry is struggling to produce much faster.
Others see Mr. Macron’s hard line as an electoral campaign aimed at distinguishing his geopolitics from that of Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally (RN) was formerly financed by a Russian bank. Although it is indeed a campaign theme, its effectiveness is questionable. THE RN He looks set to crush his party in the European Parliament elections in June. The idea of sending ground forces to Ukraine is deeply unpopular in France.
It should be noted that Mr Macron’s speech about-face received the strongest approval from Europe’s once-skeptical eastern fringe. “I think it’s authentic,” says Nicu Popescu, Moldova’s former foreign minister. “Macron concluded that the EUThe security of our country depends on the security of its neighbors.” Macron supports Estonian idea of common union EU borrowing to buy weapons from Ukraine, an idea hated in frugal Germany. French diplomats have recently drawn up alarming scenarios about the implications of a Russian victory. Mr. Macron, says a French military source, no longer has any doubts about Moscow’s expansionist ambitions. If Russia wins, the president said last month, Mr. Putin won’t stop at Ukraine. Mr. Macron must now act according to his new understanding. ■
To stay up to date with the biggest European news, subscribe to Café Europa, our weekly newsletter reserved for subscribers.