This is the story of a relationship doomed to failure. Between a dictator “indifferent to human life” and a French president “caught up in a romantic outburst”, it could only end badly, says Isabelle Lasserre, deputy editor-in-chief of Le Figaro and author of Macron – Poutine, les liaisonsdangerous ( released on April 26 by Éditions de l’Observatoire). His book draws up an indictment against the Russian policy of the President of the Republic.

The book opens, unsurprisingly, with one of the many phone calls between the Élysée and the Kremlin. It is February 24, 2022 and Emmanuel Macron has just learned that Vladimir Putin has launched his troops into Ukraine. The Head of State believed until the end that he could avoid war. He realizes, a little late, that he has been duped. “You have made a historic decision that will separate us for a long time,” he says furiously. Then he threatens, “I take note and I don’t know when we’ll talk again.” »

Why didn’t he keep his word! seems to deplore the author who believes that the call should indeed have been the last. But we know the rest, the telephone relationship between Paris and Moscow will continue for many weeks, only briefly interrupted by the most tragic episodes of the war, such as the Boutcha massacre. A dangerous and incomprehensible liaison whose balance sheet is “an empty shell”, according to Lasserre. Worse, it has the harmful consequence of irritating the Ukrainians, destabilizing the Western camp and dividing Europe. This “diplomatic relentlessness” is denounced by the specialists quoted in the book, including Michel Duclos, adviser to the Institut Montaigne. “If Macron had taken the lead of the resistance, he would have been the king of Europe”, laments the former ambassador. Isabelle Lasserre agrees: “France could have, if it had been able to place itself on the right side of history without hesitation at the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, take the lead in Europe by defending its values ??and giving it a new role on the international scene. »

The break with the master of the Kremlin, inevitable but constantly postponed, is not the only mistake of the French president, according to the author who lists seven others (in particular his desire “not to humiliate Russia”, that of him grant “security guarantees”), collected in a chapter titled “A President Shouldn’t Say That”. Mistakes that have degraded his image on the Ukrainian side… but also in the Kremlin, where the circles of power make fun of this president who quotes Tolstoy or Dostoevsky as soon as he addresses them. We also learn that Putin has little regard for his French counterpart, whom he nicknames “Macrontchik”, the little Macron, and for his policy of appeasement which leaves indifferent “this icy animal closed to emotions and soft power”.

At a time when Paris is carrying out another controversial rapprochement, with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Lasserre is sorry to see that the Head of State does not adhere to the vision of a world where, from Donbass to Taiwan, a same struggle, that of democracies against dictatorships. According to her, the war in Ukraine divides Western strategists into two schools, which she ranks behind two of its most eminent representatives. On one side, George Soros and those who call for defeating Putin and permanently weakening his country. On the other, the proponents of Realpolitik, represented by Henry Kissinger, who fear to “doom to despair” a nuclear Russia. We understand that she is a Sorosian and that she classifies Macron in the Kissingerian camp. For the latter, the time for diplomacy will return and it will again be necessary to negotiate with the master of the Kremlin. The French president will then be able to reactivate his relationship with Putin in order to know his intentions. She warns him by suggesting that he meditate on a thought of the oligarch Sergei Pugachev, who was close to the Russian president before fleeing the country. “Putin is a very closed person, whom no one understands to the end. Not even his children and his ex-wife. »