The French President, Emmanuel Macron, will speak on Friday on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to try to find out his true plans in Ukraine, suggest a desdecaled plan and warn him from the cost of an aggression.
Macron, which today met in Berlin with the Chancellor Olaf Scholz will become the first European leader who engaged in a direct line with Putin since the prebelic drums sounded in Ukraine.
Without the germano of adoption Angela Merkel in the Foreign Ministry, the only leader that Putin saw equally as well as and was able to talk indistinctly in German and Russian, the bridge between Brussels and Moscow is now via Paris.
In the French capital, this Thursday will meet this Thursday German, Russian, Ukrainian and French political advisers, the so-called Normandy format to try reactive the Minsk process.
The agenda, however, does not include political issues, but humanitarian.
It will serve, however, as a preparatory of a new meeting, which in this case will try to organize Germany.
Scholz and Macron did not speculate about the purpose of the Movement of Russian troops along the border with Ukraine “because that only Putin knows.”
What “if we know is that this massive presence of military personnel does not stabilize, rather on the contrary and that is typical of Putin,” Macron said.
He cited, as an example of the destabilizing policy of the Kremlin, the cyber attacks he carries out against third countries and the political use of migration, in clear reference to Belarus.
“Conversations with Russia have always been very difficult, but the important thing is to maintain all open diplomatic channels, because the immediate objective is to deswpel the tension on the border with Ukraine and prevent events from evolving in the way nobody wants,” he said.
Macron at a press conference with Scholz prior to your conversations.
As for the channels of dialogue, Russia prevails that of NATO and bilateral with the United States.
While Scholz and Macron remembered, without excluding these, that the most appropriate to deal with security issues that concern Europe is the OSCE.
“All forums, naturally, can contribute to the search for a solution to the conflict, and Europe as such is also willing to do so,” Macron said.
He quoted as an example the format of Normandy and the responsibility and capacity of action they have in this semester France and Germany at an international level.
France has assumed in January the Presidency of the EU and Germany that of G-7.
Scholz and Macron insisted that the position of the EU with respect to Ukraine is unity, while the rest to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations is irreversable.
“Our position is clear, if there is aggression there will be consequences for Russia and the price will be very expensive,” said Scholz, who, in line with Macron and the EU did not specify that consequences would be.
Nor did they respond to the question of whether it would not be better to list Russia the measures that await you if you invade Ukraine as a deterrent.
The press could only start Macron that the sanctions would be gradual, depending on the severity of the acts that Russia comet.
Both Macron and Scholz avointed pronounce themselves openly on the shipment of military units to East East Countries under the NATO umbrella, so as not to evidence its discrepancies.
Unlike Germany, France seems willing to reinforce the positions of the Alliance in Romania.
They maintain, however, the same position as to the supply of arms to Kiev, although Berlin has said it more clearly.
Scholz reiterated together with Macron that Germany will not send weapons to Ukraine for its defense while the government’s position set in the previous legislature is not to export armaments to conflict zones.
The German refusal has raised blisters in Ukraine, which has described it as “betrayal”, but also in the most anti-zone allied countries.
For Lithuania, the German ‘no’ is “disappointing” and in Poland consider it a mistake.
The chancellor, however, defended his decision and said that Germany has done more by Ukraine than other countries in the environment.
He recalled that Germany has supported democracy in that country, has invested in its economic development, ensured that it would maintain its status as a transit country in the Russian gas supply network, not yet being part of the conflict between Kiev and Moscow and has tried to mediate
With the Normandy format to solve the contentious in Crimea and the Donbore region.
