Macron Heads East on Risky Peacemaker Mission — Ukraine Crisis: Macron Says a Deal to Avoid War Is Within Reach
- Macron Heads East on Risky Peacemaker Mission
by CLEA CAULCUTT, GIORGIO LEALI AND DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, https://www.politico.eu/pro/ , 6 Fec 2022
The French president wants a big breakthrough with Putin ahead of April’s election, but the mission to Moscow could easily backfire.
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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron is taking an almighty gamble by styling himself as the world leader who can strike a peace deal with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a meeting on Monday.
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If he pulls it off, he’ll be the hero who prevented an assault on Ukraine and put Europe back on the map as a diplomatic big-hitter, all just in time for the French presidential election in April. Stoking expectations of a breakthrough, French media in recent days have been full of comparisons with former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who successfully jetted in as the middleman in the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008.
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The one-man mission neatly dovetails with Macron’s vision of European “strategic autonomy” — meaning a Europe that can stick up for its own security interests and not sit on the sidelines while Washington and Moscow duke it out. As Cyrille Bret, an international relations expert at Sciences Po, put it: “You don’t win elections with foreign policy, but it is a reminder of Emmanuel Macron’s status as a statesman of international stature and it allows him to stand out from the other candidates even before entering the campaign, to show that he is capable of making France exist on the international scene.”
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– - Ukraine Crisis: Macron Says a Deal to Avoid War Is Within Reach
by https://www.bbc.com/
French President Emmanuel Macron has said he thinks a deal to avoid war in Ukraine is possible and that it is legitimate for Russia to raise its own security concerns.
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Before talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, he called for a “new balance” to protect European states and appease Russia. He restated that the sovereignty of Ukraine was not up for discussion.
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Russia has massed troops on Ukraine’s border but denies planning to invade. Moscow has made a string of demands, including that the Nato defence alliance rule out Ukraine becoming a member, and that it reduce its military presence in eastern Europe. Western countries have rejected this, instead suggesting other areas of negotiation, for example talks on cutting back nuclear weaponry.
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