Emmanuel Macron broke a taboo on Monday, openly evoking the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine to prevent a Russian victory. Almost all the allies have contradicted him, more or less vehemently, and the internal opposition – from the left, right and extreme right – have described him as imprudent, irresponsible and bellicose.
Various indications point to the fact that the French president, with his audacity, was looking for something more than to shake the conscience of the allies, especially that of the always reluctant German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and to prepare their spirits for the great Russian offensive that many fear in the spring , after Putin’s sure landslide victory in the presidential elections. Alarmed by the very unfavorable polls for the extreme right of Marine Le Pen, the Macronists want to dramatize the European elections in June. The international context can indeed be explosive. Macron would then appear as the statesman of a Europe at war, at the head of a nuclear power and inflexible with Putin’s aggressive totalitarianism. In front, an extreme right that for many years was condescending towards the Kremlin, even admiring Putin, and even received Russian loans.
As revealed yesterday by the newspaper Le Parisien, in December, during a trip to Jordan, Macron himself expressed his conviction to the press entourage accompanying him that the war in Ukraine would be the dominant theme of the campaign of European elections. This prediction could materialize. Faced with an even more inflamed conflict, issues such as immigration or agricultural policy would take a back seat.
An appetizer of this strategy could have been the violent debate on Tuesday in the National Assembly. Le Pen lashed out at Macron for his warmongering frivolity and the “existential risk” to which the suggestion of sending troops would expose him. Quoting a socialist president, François Mitterrand, during the war in the former Yugoslavia, the three-time candidate for the Elysée for the extreme right asked herself: “What is the divine right that makes France the soldier of all just wars Of the world?”.
The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, responded to Le Pen with a devastating sentence. “You have to wonder if Vladimir Putin’s troops are not already in our country,” he said. As if the message had not been clear enough, Attal added: “I am talking about you and your troops, Mrs. Le Pen.”
The ultra-right were outraged, but they understood very well where the discussion can be directed before the election date of June 9.
