De Gaulle seeks leadership in the most serious European geopolitical crisis since World War II. He is obviously not the old general, the greatest national glory of France, who died on November 9, 1970, but his youngest grandson. Pierre de Gaulle, 59, has caused a mixture of bewilderment and embarrassment with his statements in favor of Vladimir Putin and his tirades against Kyiv, the United States and NATO.
The official participation of Pierre de Gaulle, the day before yesterday, in the Volgograd ceremonies to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad has scandalized France. A commentator from the LCI channel –dedicated almost exclusively to the Ukrainian conflict– described the grandson as a “clown” and unworthy of the giant who was his grandfather, in addition to reproaching him for being “a tax exile” in Switzerland, where he works as a consultant. business.
De Gaulle’s pro-Russian grandson, whom he physically resembles, has been playing Moscow’s game for some time. In addition, he maintains that his opinions are “in continuity” with his grandfather’s thought. He assures, for example, that the United States, NATO and the European Union are responsible for the war for having armed Kyiv for years. “Westerners, unfortunately, have let Zelensky, the oligarchs and the neo-Nazi military groups do their thing,” he says. For him, Ukraine is a platform for all kinds of illicit trafficking, it is home to suspicious biological laboratories and has sold a third of its most fertile land to Anglo-Saxon funds, while Russia “is a people of philosophers, scientists, musicians, conquerors ”. “Putin is a great leader,” he told Le Parisien. “The Russians are far from having lost; they are chess players, ”he warned in Le Figaro.
Pierre’s older brother, Yves de Gaulle, was forced to react to preserve the good name of the clan. He recalled that his brother only speaks for himself and not in that of the family “and even less in that of General De Gaulle.”
It is understandable that the Kremlin takes advantage of Pierre de Gaulle and treats him almost like a state guest. He offers to be in acts and debates. Having a grandson of the general as an ally has an irresistible morbidity and sows some existential doubts in France itself. Was it not General de Gaulle, in effect, who flew to Moscow in December 1944, in the middle of the war, to sign a Franco-Soviet pact with Stalin?
It is in Moscow’s interest to manipulate history and gain advantage. It is true that it was General De Gaulle who, in 1959, invented the formula for a Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals”, to overcome the logic of blocs, and in 1966 he removed France from the NATO military structure because he wanted to preserve its strategic autonomy. De Gaulle provided France with its own nuclear deterrent so as not to depend on the protective umbrella of the United States.
But despite his claim, more theoretical than real, of being a “balancing power” – a concept Macron still uses – de Gaulle was clear who the enemy really was. “It is not necessary to possess bombs to destroy Moscow a hundred times over. It is enough to have bombs to destroy Moscow once, ”he declared in 1956. Six years later, during the Cuban missile crisis, his support for the United States was resounding.
Faced with the words of his grandson Pierre and the controversy in France, Charles de Gaulle must turn in his modest grave in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises.