NEWS
ANALYSIS
France and Germany Stand With Ukraine, and Putin
Can Wait
Seeking to overcome tensions with Kyiv, President
Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany backed away
from Moscow diplomacy, at least for now.
Roger Cohen
By Roger
Cohen
June 16,
2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/world/europe/zelensky-macron-sholz-ukraine.html
ODESA,
Ukraine — It was late in the day, almost four months after Russia’s unprovoked
invasion of Ukraine, but when the leaders of the European Union’s three largest
nations at last journeyed to Kyiv, their intent was clear: to dispel any doubt
that they would waver in backing Ukraine’s quest for sovereignty, territorial
integrity, freedom and membership in what Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany
called “the European family.”
The
reassurance, which appeared undiluted by any pressure on Ukraine to negotiate
with Moscow, was emphatic. The determination to lay to rest any whiff of
appeasement of the indiscriminate aggression by President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia, which has already taken tens of thousands of lives, appeared paramount.
The
insistence last month by President Emmanuel Macron of France that it was
important never to cede “to the temptation of humiliation” with respect to
Russia had infuriated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who said the
French president should not be seeking “a way out for Russia.” In Kyiv on
Thursday, Mr. Macron pivoted, expressing effusive support for the Ukrainian
cause.
“We will do
everything so that Ukraine can choose its destiny,” he said.
Still, the
question remained open of how a war that has put acute pressure on the global
economy, with inflation rising sharply and food shortages looming, would ever
be ended. The European leaders’ avoidance of any overt exhortation to Mr.
Zelensky to negotiate with Mr. Putin almost certainly did not mean that they
had given up their strong inclination to favor diplomacy and avert, at any
cost, some escalation of the war.
In the
immediate term, Europe and its leaders need peace to avoid a downward economic
spiral. Soaring energy prices are angering voters. But in the longer term,
Europe needs affirmation of the values of freedom and peace that have served it
well since 1945 and been cemented by NATO and the European Union.
It was to
this vision, and Ukraine’s part in it, that the leaders committed themselves on
Thursday.
“Today, it
is clearly on Ukrainian soil that the security of the European continent as a
whole is at stake,” Mr. Macron said. “Europe is at your side and will remain so
as long as necessary.”
This was a
different tone from Mr. Macron. Tensions had flared between Mr. Zelensky and
his French and German counterparts over issues including delivery of heavy
weapons to Ukraine and Mr. Macron’s and Mr. Scholz’s readiness to keep
diplomatic avenues open to Mr. Putin.
Before the
visit Thursday, Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, told the
mass-circulation German daily Bild that he was worried the European leaders
would come to Kyiv saying “we need to end the war that is causing food
problems” and “we need to save Putin’s face.”
If there
were any such thoughts — and the economic problems caused by the war mount by
the day for hard-pressed European leaders — they found no public expression.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy, who accompanied the German and French
leaders, declared: “Today the most important message in this visit is that
Italy wants Ukraine in the European Union.”
This
process will take time, but the expression of support for Ukrainian E.U.
membership, echoed by President Klaus Iohannis of Romania, the fourth member of
the delegation, was the most unequivocal yet seen. It suggested that European
leaders would formalize Ukraine’s status as an accession candidate to the
union.
“Ladies and
gentlemen, Ukraine should live!” Mr. Scholz said, using the Ukrainian
expression of victory for Ukraine, “Slava Ukraini.” For a leader who has been
cautious in expressions of support, it was a passionate declaration.
“Germany
cannot, and does not want to be seen as the party that brought NATO to war,”
said Uwe Jun, a political scientist at the University of Trier, explaining Mr.
Scholz’s carefully calibrated approach to Kyiv in recent months.
Ukraine’s
conviction that its future security and prosperity rest with Europe has for
many years been intolerable to Mr. Putin, who believes Ukraine’s fate — if
indeed it is to have one as a nation — is for Russia to decide.
The
brutality of Russia’s invasion has only redoubled Ukraine’s determination to
look West, not East, to secure its development — one of the many ways in which
the Russian leader’s reckless gamble has appeared to bolster the very outcomes,
like a galvanized NATO alliance, that he had sought to undermine.
“In the last
two decades we have moved in opposite directions, Ukraine toward civilization
in the West, and Russia toward the past, the Soviet past,” said Petro Obukhov,
a member of the City Council of Odesa, who is leading a campaign to remove
street names associated with Russia, which founded the city during the reign of
Catherine the Great. “We have parted ways.”
Several
European leaders, as well as the American secretaries of state and defense,
preceded Mr. Macron and Mr. Scholz to Kyiv. The apparent reluctance of the
French and German leaders to come had intensified skepticism in the Ukrainian
capital about their intentions — especially since the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2
accords, brokered by Paris and Berlin in an attempt to end the
Russian-instigated separatist war in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014, had
proved so ineffectual.
The last
thing Ukraine wants is what is sometimes derisively called a “Minsk 3,” some
concocted cease-fire based on mutual concessions that are never implemented and
that leave Mr. Putin holding Ukrainian territory with the option of applying
further brute force whenever he next chooses.
Russia
poured scorn on the visit. Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former president and now the
deputy chairman of the Security Council, said “European connoisseurs of frogs,
liver and pasta love to visit Kyiv. The benefits are zero.”
This crude
invective, from a Russian politician once seen as milder and more pro-European
than his master, Mr. Putin, indicated how harsh the confrontation between
Russia and the West has become and how elusive peace may prove. Earlier this
week, Mr. Medvedev suggested, with smug contempt, that two years from now
Ukraine may not exist.
Mr. Macron
has made much in recent months of the need to keep talking to Mr. Putin’s
Russia, a vast power that, as he sees it, will threaten European stability as
long as it is not integrated in some new security architecture. This has caused
uneasiness in Ukraine.
Referring
to Ukrainian membership of the European Union, Mr. Macron said last month: “We
all know perfectly well that the process permitting the admission would take
several years, and in fact no doubt several decades.”
Though the
process is still expected to take years, the talk on Thursday in Kyiv was of
accelerating it, not the need for Ukrainian patience.
The Russian
invasion was “premeditated, deliberate, unjustified and unjustifiable,” Mr.
Macron said.
He announced
that France would deliver six Caesar long-range, self-propelled howitzers to
Ukraine, adding to the 12 already delivered. The Caesars are prized for
accuracy.
The issue
of weapons deliveries to Ukraine has plagued Mr. Scholz, and was at the root of
a spat in March that saw the German president, Franz-Walter Steinmeier,
disinvited to Ukraine. Tensions have since eased, but Mr. Scholz remains under
pressure from some members of his Social Democratic Party to avoid sending too
many heavy weapons.
The chancellor
appeared visibly moved during a visit to the devastated Kyiv suburb of Irpin.
“It’s all the worse when you see how terribly senseless the violence is,” he
said of what he called “the Russian war of aggression.”
Whether the
experience would change German policy was unclear. But it appears unlikely that
the tensions between Germany and Ukraine over the degree of German support will
ever be fully dispelled. Germany’s postwar embrace of freedom is equaled only
by its horror of war.
Any
resolution of the crisis that has left millions of tons of Ukrainian grain
rotting in silos on the Black Sea coast also seemed distant. Mr. Macron raised
the issue, blaming the “global food crisis” on “Russian aggression.” Russia, of
course, blames Ukraine, another illustration of the hardening impasse of the
conflict.
Roger Cohen
is the Paris bureau chief of The Times. He was a columnist from 2009 to 2020.
He has worked for The Times for more than 30 years and has served as a foreign
correspondent and foreign editor. Raised in South Africa and Britain, he is a
naturalized American. @NYTimesCohen
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