French President Emmanuel Macron (right) receives Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Fort de Brégançon in Bormes-les-Mimosas, southern France, on Monday, August 19, 2019.Image: keystone
French President Macron wants to influence his Russian counterpart Putin again. Nobody has any illusions about this.
12/22/2025, 10:04 p.mDecember 22, 2025, 10:30 p.m
Stefan Brändle, Paris / ch media
You have to hand it to Emmanuel Macron: he doesn’t give up, even if the endeavor seems hopeless. The French President wants to talk to Vladimir Putin about a possible end to the war. The Frenchman said last week that it could be “useful” right now to revisit the conversation in order to agree on the modalities of a ceasefire in Ukraine. And the echo came from Moscow that the Russian president was “ready for dialogue”.
Is there perhaps something moving? In any case, Macron’s goal is twofold. On the one hand, he wants to bring the Europeans into the Ukraine negotiations. This also and especially in the event that US President Donald Trump gets tired of them. And Macron is not thinking about the diplomatic trap that the British, French and Germans – the latter in the person of Chancellor advisor Günter Sautter – had to put up with during the negotiations in Miami (Florida). The Americans are negotiating there separately with the Russians and Ukrainians. The talks were generally classified as “constructive” but have not yet produced any progress.
Putin once called Macron “Napoleon” out of mockery.Image: keystone
That is why Macron wants to reactivate his contact with the Kremlin at the highest level, as he did before and after the start of the war in February 2022. Back then, Macron spared no effort to stay in conversation with Putin. He had 15 telephone conversations with him, most of them lasting hours. He flew to Moscow just a few days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But he achieved nothing more than the image of monstrous humiliation: When he entered the meeting room in the Kremlin, Putin didn’t even stand up, but coldly directed him to the other end of a long table.
An original audio recording from February 20th, four days before the start of the war, later circulated in Paris. Macron played his last card, a meeting between Putin and then US President Joe Biden. The Russian had no time for such peace chimeras: “Not to hide anything from you,” he said, “I’m making a phone call from a sports hall, I’m about to go play ice hockey.”
One humiliation follows the next
The abysmal contempt for the hapless French president continued in the Kremlin when he himself avoided contact from mid-2022. “Napoleon,” Putin called him disparagingly. Last week he described European leaders as “piglets”; Vice President Dmitry Medvedev once again dismissed Macron as a “twit”.
Ukrainian President looks at Macron during ceasefire negotiations.Image: keystone
The French president puts up with such insults. The dynamics of the various Ukraine talks are favorable because “the prospect of a ceasefire and peace negotiations is emerging,” according to the Elysée. The first step would be to have a bilateral telephone conversation between Putin and Macron before they see each other in person.
In Alaska, not even the potential Nobel Peace Prize winner had made any progress in the White House. Trump and Putin are on the same side, comes the answer from the Elysée; that prevents any solution.
To be respected as a nuclear nation
Macron has known Putin on a first-name basis for eight years. He consults daily with his EU partners Friedrich Merz and Keir Starmer. However, the Frenchman believes that it would be wrong to invite her to a meeting with Putin: the Russian is most likely to speak “man-to-man”. But of course le Président wants to remain in “complete transparency,” that is, in close contact, with the German Chancellor, the British Prime Minister and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In this July 13, 2007 file photo, French naval officers wait on the nuclear submarine “Le Vigilant” at the L’Ile Longue military base near Brest, Brittany.Image: keystone
Maybe – but where does Macron get the European mandate for a meeting with Putin? A French head of state doesn’t need something like that. Only on Sunday did Macron solemnly announce that he would give his nation an aircraft carrier from 2038. France is a nuclear nation that knows how to command respect.
Parisian diplomats are also warning Macron about his hubris, which can burst like a balloon when dealing with someone like Putin. There is skepticism everywhere. Be it the cession of Donbass, the reduction of the army, NATO-Njet and security guarantees for Kiev: each of these Russian demands currently seems insurmountably high. Too high even for the proud captain of an aircraft carrier. (aargauerzeitung.ch)