French President Emmanuel Macron said they
should provide security guarantees to Russia. His remarks received a reaction from Ukraine
and the Baltic countries. Macron faced strong criticism from Kyiv and
Baltic nations after he suggested Russia would need to be given security guarantees as part
of future negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The comments, made in an interview with French
television channel TF1, came after Macron held talks with US president Joe Biden during
a state visit to Washington, in which they discussed Russia’s aggression in Ukraine
and how they can continue to support Ukraine.
Macron said the two leaders had talked about
the need for the US and Europe to prepare a security architecture for tomorrow for the
region. He said, “This means that one of the essential
points we must address — as Russian president Vladimir Putin has always said — is the
fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten
Russia.
That topic will be part of the topics for
peace, so we need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member
states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.” Ukrainian president Zelensky’s national
security chief Oleksiy Danilov said, “Someone wants to provide security guarantees to a
terrorist and killer state?” Referring to the post-second world war tribunals,
he added: “Instead of Nuremberg — to sign an agreement with Russia and shake hands?” Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said
the world instead needed security guarantees from Russia, which should be held accountable. He said, “Civilised world needs ‘security
guarantees’ from barbaric intentions of post-Putin Russia.” Kyiv, which is itself seeking postwar security
guarantees from western states, has rejected any suggestion that Putin should be rewarded
with concessions after the conflict, given that Russia was the aggressor. Critics have previously accused Macron of
being soft on Moscow after he asserted that the west “should not humiliate Russia”
over the war because it would still be a neighbor once the conflict was over.
Alexander Stubb, the former prime minister
of Finland, which has applied for Nato membership as a consequence of the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, said he fundamentally disagreed with Macron. “The only security guarantees we should
focus on are essentially non-Russian,” he wrote on Twitter. “Russia needs first to guarantee that it
does not attack others. Only then can we begin discussions on European security.” Artis Pabriks, Latvia’s deputy prime minister
said: “The idea that the Russian invasion can be ended by the west giving security guarantees
to Russia is falling into the trap of Putin’s narrative that the west and Ukraine are responsible
for this war and Russia is an innocent victim.” Linas Linkevičius, former Lithuanian foreign
minister, tweeted: “Russia has all security guarantees if it doesn’t attack, annex or
occupy its neighbors.
If anyone wants to create a new security architecture
that allows a terrorist state to continue its methods of intimidation, they should think
again.” Macron’s comments also appeared to give
credence to Putin’s allegation that Nato had “expanded” toward Russia’s borders
by admitting former Soviet states, and that this was a legitimate reason for the invasion. Many in Ukraine and the West are strongly
opposed to any negotiation with Putin that would reward him with concessions, especially
as Ukraine has driven back Russian forces from large areas. But Macron's remarks suggested he was sympathetic
to Moscow's need for security guarantees — a demand that was the focus of intense but failed
diplomacy in the run-up to the war. From the beginning of the invasion, Putin
said at a joint news conference with Macron in Moscow that Russia would keep trying to
obtain answers from the West to its main three security demands.
These include no more NATO enlargement, no
missile deployments near its borders, and a scaling back of NATO's military infrastructure
in Europe to 1997 levels. The US said at the time that the Russian demands
were "non-starters". Citing NATO expansion towards Russia's borders,
Putin said the West was plotting to destroy his country, engaging in nuclear blackmail
by allegedly discussing the potential use of nuclear weapons against Moscow, and accused
the United States, the European Union and Britain of encouraging Ukraine to push military
operations into Russia itself. He said, "In its aggressive anti-Russian policy,
the West has crossed every line. This is not a bluff. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear
weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them." The address, which followed a critical Russian
battlefield defeat in northeastern Ukraine, fuelled speculation about the course of the
war and showed Putin was doubling down on what he calls his special military operation
in Ukraine. In essence, Putin is betting that by increasing
the risk of a direct confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO military alliance and Russia
— a step towards World War Three — the West will blink over its support for Ukraine, something
it has shown no sign of doing so far.
Putin's war in Ukraine has killed tens of
thousands, unleashed an inflationary wave through the global economy and triggered the
worst confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when many feared
nuclear war imminent. Putin signed a decree on partially mobilizing
Russia's reserves, arguing that Russian soldiers were effectively facing the full force of
the collective West which has been supplying Kyiv's forces with advanced weapons, training
and intelligence.
Speaking shortly after Putin, Defence Minister
Sergei Shoigu said that Russia would draft some 300,000 additional personnel out of some
25 million potential fighters at Moscow's disposal. The mobilisation is the first since the Soviet
Union battled Nazi Germany in Second World War. Such a move is risky for Putin, who has so
far tried to preserve a semblance of peace in the capital and other major cities where
support for the war is lower than in the provinces. Ever since Putin was handed the nuclear briefcase
by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, his overriding priority has been to restore
at least some of the great power status that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed
in 1991. Putin has repeatedly railed against the United
States for driving NATO's eastward expansion, especially its courting of ex-Soviet republics
such as Ukraine and Georgia which Russia regards as part of its own sphere of influence, an
idea both nations reject. Putin said that top government officials in
several unnamed leading NATO countries had spoken of potentially using nuclear weapons
against Russia. He also accused the West of risking a nuclear
catastrophe, by allowing Ukraine to shell the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant which
is under Russian control, something Kyiv has denied.
He also repeatedly warned that Moscow would
draw conclusions if the U.S. supplies long-range missiles to Ukraine, adding that he would
set his eyes on new targets that have not been attacked. Putin said, “If it now comes to rockets
and they are supplied, we will draw conclusions from that and employ the weapons that we have
in sufficient quantities to strike those facilities that we are not attacking so far.” He said, “In my view, all this fuss over
additional deliveries of armaments generally pursues the sole objective of stretching out
the armed conflict as long as possible.” His warning comes in response to the Biden
administration’s decision to send advanced rocket systems as part of a $700 million weapons
package to Ukraine.
The High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems
(HIMARS) can fire many of the same types of rockets as the Multiple Launch Rocket Systems,
which can hit targets 300 kilometers away. The HIMARS allows Ukrainians to more precisely
strike targets from a greater distance inside Ukraine. When asked about U.S. assurances that the
systems would not be used inside Russian territory, Putin said it “depends on the types of rockets
that the Americans will supply.”.