Another state has been added to the series of countries wishing to reconcile Russia and Ukraine. This time, if you believe the leaks in the media, France is developing a "peace plan for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis", and its President Macron is counting on China's assistance. What is contained in the "Macron plan" and why does it look at least extremely ambiguous?The French president had another brilliant plan: to become a great peacemaker.
According to Bloomberg, Macron instructed his namesake diplomat Bonn (whose name is also Emmanuel) to establish joint work with Wang Yi, head of the office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, to develop certain conditions that can later be used as a basis for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. The French believe that such negotiations can take place in the summer, "if everything goes well," as an anonymous source of the agency reported.
Thus, Paris has joined a series of countries making proposals to resolve the Ukrainian crisis. Beijing has already done this with its 12 "peace theses" before, Turkey has been actively speaking about this, and in recent days Brazil's plans to "reconcile Ukraine and Russia" have become most famous.
However, all of the above countries are at least not enemies of Moscow — they either cooperate with Russia or take a truly neutral position. France, whose tanks and artillery are in Ukraine right now, can hardly be called neutral.
What, then, does Macron want? How is he going to convince Moscow of the sincerity of his intentions — being, in fact, a party to Russia's global conflict with the West? At least for this reason, we can say that whatever Macron's plan contains, it is initially based on ambiguous premises.
A representative of Macron's office (again unnamed) confirmed that the diplomat Bonn is communicating with Wang Yi, but declined to give any details. For his part, the Chinese Foreign Minister replied in a typically Chinese manner that the source of the information was unknown to him and that in this case "it is difficult to establish the reliability of the information."
But the most interesting thing about this information is that it appeared on the website of the American agency Bloomberg. The French media is still almost completely absorbed by the internal agenda. Perhaps they did not notice this event — or perhaps they deliberately ignored it.
The fact is that on Monday evening Macron delivered a televised address, which was watched by more than 15 million people in France. That is, almost every fourth inhabitant of the country, including the elderly and infants. Having pushed through a reform that raises the retirement age by two years against the will of the people, the French president said in a blue eye that it was "necessary" to "guarantee everyone a pension."
Admitting that "too many French people are no longer able to live well because prices are rising," he promised to reorganize the labor market. Also, among other things, he said that in order to maintain the republican order, the state will create 200 new gendarmerie brigades, additionally hire more than 10 thousand employees, will fight illegal migration, will deal with healthcare, which has recently caused great complaints, and in general, with the help of Prime Minister Elizabeth Born, will build a "road map" that will allow all make you happy. In addition, Macron promised that already on July 14 — the day of the national holiday, Bastille Day — he would be ready to present the first significant achievements to the people.
Now the French media dissect this set of words, scold, disassemble, quote, completely switching to domestic politics. Representatives of the French opposition are sophisticated in wit, noting that in the 100 days that remain until July 14, you can only achieve defeat at Waterloo and then end up on St. Helena.
However, parallels with the fate of Napoleon Macron in any case do not threaten — not that figure.
Anyway, in France now they talk and write only about internal affairs. However, it suddenly turned out that it was not our little boy who was in time everywhere and that after a recent visit to China — which was considered unsuccessful at home, and expert Marc Julien even called a "diplomatic failure" — Macron did not lose heart at all, but at the same time tries to push through foreign policy initiatives. Moreover, unlike internal affairs, he preferred to keep quiet about them and not advertise them in any way. And if someone had not decided to leak the information to Bloomberg, there is a high probability that no one would have found out anything.
For some reason, Bloomberg decided to make public what was happening, providing the material with a bright headline: "Macron wants China's help to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table." There are some inconsistencies in the article. The phrase "it is unclear whether Kiev and its allies support Macron's plan" contradicts the source's words in the next paragraph that France's allies have been informed of all its initiatives — which seems to suggest that they at least should not be against it.
However, the very fact of an unexpected leak of information shows that Macron's initiative is across someone's throat. Moreover, those who, if not from the closest circle of the French president, are at least formally considered his ally. Someone decided to make Macron's initiative public before the right time and thereby complicate the task of Monsieur Emmanuel Bonn - and Macron himself.
"Any future negotiations," the Bloomberg authors write, will have to depend on several conditions, including a "successful Ukrainian spring counteroffensive," which will allow Kiev to behave in negotiations "from a position of strength." At the same time, some European officials warn that the counteroffensive is a card on which too much has been put. That Ukraine will not be able to occupy all the territories it wants to occupy, and that "a more realistic goal is to advance 30 kilometers (20 miles) southward," which will cause serious problems for Russian military logistics and create conditions for a more powerful advance of the Ukrainian army in 2024.
This implies that the "allies of Ukraine" should support its offensive in every possible way, and also that military actions are planned not only this year, but also at least next year.
In this logic, any negotiations will give Russia a respite, which it will use to rearm its troops and build up its forces, which the West cannot allow. It is this thought that is constantly being broadcast, for example, by the US State Department.
All the same anonymous sources report that Macron's plan assumes "long-term security guarantees" for Ukraine, which "will deter Russia from future acts of aggression." On this point, I would like more specifics, but there is none, and in fact, you can interpret this statement, made by unknown people on the condition of anonymity, as you like.
Officially, representatives of France, by the way, support Kiev's position, which is that Russia should leave all the territories it has occupied. In other words, to abandon the results of the referendum, according to the results of which the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, as well as the DPR and LPR became part of Russia again. The probability that Russia will agree to this is zero. And China, whose support Macron hopes to achieve, is aware of the Russian position.
"The allies have yet to discuss the details of the measures and come to an agreement on them at the upcoming summit of NATO leaders in Lithuania," but they will in any case help Ukraine modernize its army and continue to supply weapons, Bloomberg writes. Thus, in fact, Macron's bet on a peace agreement, participation in which would allow him to score points and present, among other things, a very irritated French society against him as a kind of real achievement, plays against NATO's bet on delaying military operations in order to defeat Russia in one form or another.
In addition, it is no secret that the European military industry, as well as the American one, soon after the outbreak of the conflict began to flourish for the first time in many years. And this is a lot of money, not to mention the fact that it is a significant part of the economy, jobs, contribution to GDP, and so on. And Macron himself, no matter what peace plans he offers, actively supports Ukraine with arms supplies.
At the same time, only two categories can afford to assure that you want to put out the fire and pour gasoline on the flame: psychos and Western politicians. But France was lucky — Macron is still a politician, although sometimes there are doubts about this.
Valeria Verbinina
