How Russia targeted France and radicalised Emmanuel Macron – He is now one of Europe’s leading Russia hawks

https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/04/18/how-russia-targeted-france-and-radicalised-emmanuel-macron

by BkkGrl

31 comments

  1. > ON JANUARY 16th the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced that he would send another 40 long-range Scalp cruise missiles to Ukraine. Later that day Russia bombed Kharkiv, in north-eastern Ukraine, claiming French mercenaries were based there and supplying a list of names that the French army says is fake. Shortly afterwards the French uncovered 193 websites set up to undermine public support for Ukraine in France (as well as in Germany and Poland), run by a Russian firm based in Crimea. Days later Sébastien Lecornu, the French defence minister, said Russian air-traffic controllers had threatened that a French aircraft patrolling over the Black Sea would be shot down.
    >
    > In recent months France has catalogued an intensified Russian campaign to sow division, discredit the country and test its army. Russian security services, say French sources, commissioned the stars of David stencilled on walls in Paris last October, to stir up inter-religious tensions. In March cyber-attacks briefly took down some of the French government’s websites, and hackers stole data from its jobs agency. With the added help of Russia apologists in France, Russian bot farms turbo-charged scare stories about bed bugs in Paris, used a deepfake French news report to fabricate a supposed attempt on Mr Macron’s life, and spread vile false rumours about his wife, Brigitte.
    >
    > This systematic targeting, say those close to the president, underlies a shift that continues to puzzle many observers: Mr Macron’s conversion from a leader who sought to engage with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to one of Europe’s most hawkish voices. The president who once urged allies not to “humiliate” Russia has now called for Russia’s defeat, urged allies not to be “cowardly”, and warned that a Russian victory would spell “the end of European security”. Mr Macron has not spoken to Mr Putin since September 2022. On February 26th he refused to rule out sending ground forces to help Ukraine.
    >
    > What explains this shift? At a basic level, says Bruno Tertrais of the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank, Mr Macron was “mugged by reality”. Mr Putin lied to him and played him. The French president’s pre-war diplomatic outreach was a failure, even if he knew it was high-risk at the time. The assassination of Alexei Navalny in February served as a further jolt. As a former minister told Le Monde, Mr Macron was “radicalised by disappointment”.
    >
    > Ukraine’s difficulties on the ground, as well as the prospect of another Donald Trump presidency, have made standing up to Russia more urgent. This comes at a time when Mr Macron has already concluded, in a speech in Bratislava last May, that bringing Ukraine into both the European Union and NATO would actually strengthen his ambition for European collective defence, not dilute it.
    >
    > “For decades France had believed that when it came to Europe, smaller was better,” writes Célia Belin of the European Council on Foreign Relations, in the American magazine Foreign Affairs. Russian aggression, she notes, has transformed the case for a wider EU. A French ten-year security commitment to Ukraine is now entrenched in a bilateral agreement, signed by Mr Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky in February. It is worth €3bn ($3.2bn) in 2024 and includes a French promise to support Ukraine’s entry into NATO.
    >
    > Sceptics still query the sincerity of Mr Macron’s conversion, pointing to French efforts to cap Ukrainian farm exports. Fine words are one thing; concrete action another. Figures from Germany’s Kiel Institute suggest that French bilateral military aid is a fraction of Germany’s, though the latest numbers go up only to mid-January. With a budget deficit in 2023 of 5.5% of GDP, France is strapped for cash, its army has little kit to spare and its industry is struggling to produce stuff much faster.
    >
    > Others dismiss Mr Macron’s hardline stance as electioneering, intended to distinguish his geopolitics from Marine Le Pen’s, whose National Rally (RN) was once financed by a Russian bank. While this is indeed a campaign theme, its effectiveness is doubtful. The RN looks set to crush his party at polls for the European Parliament in June. The idea of sending ground forces to Ukraine is deeply unpopular in France.
    >
    > It is noteworthy that Mr Macron’s volte-face has won the loudest approval from Europe’s once sceptical eastern fringe. “I do think it’s genuine,” says Nicu Popescu, a former foreign minister of Moldova. “Macron has concluded that the EU’s security depends on the security of its neighbours.” Mr Macron backs Estonia’s idea of joint EU borrowing to pay for arms to Ukraine, an idea that is hated in frugal Germany. French diplomats recently drew up alarming scenarios about the implications of a Russian victory. Mr Macron, says a French military source, no longer harbours any doubts about Moscow’s expansionist ambitions. If Russia wins, the president said last month, Mr Putin will not stop at Ukraine. Now Mr Macron needs to act on his new understanding. ■

  2. Meanwhile, French businesses nicely continue to operate in russia, and France opposed to disclosure of the amount of help to Ukraine, because it was a very small amount compared to that provided by other countries such as Germany.

    The change of rhetoric after two years of full-scale invasion is nice, but it would be good to see some action.

  3. Russian bots made jokes online about him marrying his grand mother.

  4. I seriously doubt it’s about Russian bots or Navalny or being lied to, I’d be willing to bet it’s more about Russia kicking France out of Africa. Russia was stealing Frances African sphere of influence while Macron was trying to play nice with Putin.

  5. Do people actually believe this take? Is it not known that Russian interests in Africa are exactly contra French interests in the same region?

  6. Lmao its because Russia fuelled the flames of revolution in French African colonies.

    Imperialist bastards all of them.

  7. A story in 3 parts.

    [April 2023](https://www.politico.eu/article/frustrating-kyiv-dmytro-kuleba-eu-fail-deliver-ammunition-plan/)

    >France has been leading the charge to keep the money within the bloc, while others, including Poland, fear that Europe’s defense industry may not be up to the task of delivering 1 million shells to Ukraine in the promised timeframe of 12 months.

    [November 2023](https://www.politico.eu/article/germanys-pistorius-says-eu-will-fall-short-of-million-shell-pledge-to-ukraine/)

    >When the idea was launched last March, there were worries that it was unwise to put a specific figure linked to a deadline for the ammunition pledge if there was the slightest doubt about the bloc’s ability to hit that target.

    > “The question of whether 1 million was ever realistic was actually the right one,” Pistorius added. “There have been voices that have said, ‘Be careful. One million is easy to decide, the money is there, but the production has to be there.’ Unfortunately, those voices are now right.”
    >
    > The initiative came from Estonia in response to Kyiv’s desperate plea for enough ammunition to counter Russia’s grinding offensive.
    >
    > That’s not to say that it’s been a complete failure; 300,000 rounds have been shipped since February 9 under a program to send shells from national stockpiles to Ukraine. But officials have increasingly poured cold water on reaching the million mark in just four more months. On Friday, a senior EU diplomat said the goal was “very ambitious” to begin with.

    [February 2024](https://www.barrons.com/news/czech-plan-to-buy-ukraine-ammo-outside-eu-gains-backers-998df15a)

    >Brussels has provided only “30 percent” of a pledge to deliver one million shells by March this year, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday.

    >”It is clear that we did not have this million,” France’s President Emmanuel Macron told reporters after a meeting of more than 25 Ukraine-supporting nations in Paris, calling it an “imprudent commitment”.

    >Macron has long fought for European “strategic autonomy”, including in prioritising EU-based firms for military procurement — even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started in 2022.

    Macron needs to decide whether he cares more about actually defending Europe or stroking himself off to the idea of strategic autonomy. It’s not even an either-or thing, IF Europe is actually serious about helping Ukraine, then native production *should* be expanded while *also* buying up everything you can find in the meantime.

    Nothing says “strategic autonomy” like stalling negotiations for weeks to set an unrealistic guideline that you’d inevitably fail utterly to meet, and then hoping the Americans would cover for you while failing to re-adjust the plan to do whatever was necessary to meet the commitment you set for yourself.

    It was obvious months and months ago that meeting your own commitment wasn’t going to be possible without buying outside the EU, these Czech / Estonian deals could have been put together last July instead of last month.

  10. Thanks Vlad.

    Another failure and strategic blunder

  13. I can’t believe wounding a Frenchman’s pride has blown up in the Russian’s faces

    (love the French really but the do live up to their stereotypes)

  14. Being anti-Russia is not radical, it’s common sense. To believe Russia can be reasoned with is radical.

  15. I think Macron has finally realized that the bots mocking his wife are funded by Russia, and as a loving husband, this was the red line Putin crossed. Otherwise, nothing else explains how he could have ignored the Russian threat for so long.

  16. Gotta admit, I was wrong on macron. I thought he would either be an ineffectual scholz-type, or at worst, the french trudeau. Respect 

  18. I can emphasize.

    I used to be pretty much in the “well, the Russians just want to sell us gas in exchange for us ignoring some of their local undemocratic issues, how bad can it really be”-camp, and now, I want Germany to have its own nuclear weapons program, and the entire Pro-military/Pro-Ukraine issue has become the most important voting issue for me. I also recently bought my second NATO T-shirt, and I usually wear these shirts when working out in a gym (although of course I still don’t work out nearly enough overall…) which… doesn’t actually *do* much of course, but it is my way of being true to my new beliefs. The only “downside” is that political discussions with my friends have become less interesting, because we are much more in agreement than in the past, but the new discussions about weapon systems are also fun, so it’s ok.

  19. I can not help it but I like that guy! I wish my country could be led by someone like Macron!

  20. Yeah, that bed bug hoax just before the touristic seasons has also hit other America allies, and even Japan where I live.

  21. Remember when people were hating on him for trying to keep diplomacy open with Russia and to “take into account Russia’s security concerns”?

    For what its worth, at the time, I was saying that it is fine that he is doing his thing, and it is good that someone is still trying diplomacy, as long as it doesn’t result in Macron going soft on Russia or for example seeking to sell out Ukraine’s sovereignty. And based on what we see now, it didn’t.

    Although maybe Russia did manage to fool Macron for a while, causing delays in French aid to Ukraine, so there may have been some harm.

  23. He’s a big talker, I have yet to see any actual action.

  24. You don’t have to generally like what Macron does but his help for Ukraine is immensely valuable

  25. A while back I would think its unimaginable for putin to find european leaders that would help him legitimise partition of another european contry. And yet Minsk agreements happened. And apparently lived in EU leaders heads until 2022:

    [French President Emmanuel Macron sees the Minsk Agreement as the most promising off-ramp to avert conflict.](https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/09/europe/minsk-agreement-ukraine-russia-explainer-intl/index.html)

    Quite a journey indeed. And probably hurts someones pride beeing used like that.

  26. Cool, can he stop blocking the purchase of weapons from non-EU countries then?

  27. Tired of these articles that pop up every month about how much of a hawk Macron is, all he does is run his mouth while we see how abysmal French military aid and production is, 80 thousand shells by the end of the year is just pathetic, France has an extremely powerful executive and one of the most sophisticated defence industrial bases in Europe and its resulted in Jack smack shit

  28. >He is now one of Europe’s leading Russia hawks

    This is a joke right? He talks big but doesnt actually do anything. French military support for ukraine is pathetic and they have blocked tons of ukrainian support intiatives in eu.

  29. Macron just talks. What exactly did he do to “hawk” Russia or somehow else inconvenience it?

  30. While fully possible that he’s just doing this to placate voters, what i’ve seen of him recently indicates that he’s truly changed opinion. Which he deserves serious respect for.

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