French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he had spoken on the phone with Vladimir Putin to urge him to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine.
According to the Kremlin, the exchange took place on the afternoon of Monday, June 30th. The conversation between the two heads of state, which reportedly lasted more than two hours, covered various topics, including Iran’s nuclear programme and, of course, the war in Ukraine. This is the first exchange between the two leaders since September 2022.
Putin’s stance has not changed on one key point: in his view, the West is responsible for the war between Russia and Ukraine. “For many years, they have ignored Russia’s security interests and created an anti-Russian bridgehead in Ukraine,” said the pro-government Russian newspaper Rossiiskaia Gazeta, interpreting the exchange. Emmanuel Macron reportedly cut short this search for the root causes of the conflict and invited his Russian counterpart to focus on the challenges of the current situation.
Macron insisted on the need for Russia to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine “as soon as possible”—to which Vladimir Putin replied that such an agreement only made sense in the “long term.”
The exchange allowed Emmanuel Macron to once again present himself in the position of international arbiter that he so loves and finds so difficult to make credible to both the French public and the international community. Nothing substantial was in fact achieved by this telephone conversation, from which it was difficult to expect anything to begin with: the conversation took place two days after a statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that described German Chancellor Merz and President Macron as having “definitively lost their common sense.”
On the other hand, there was clear convergence on the Iranian issue. According to The New York Times, both Russia and France did not appreciate being sidelined by the U.S. when it decided to bomb Iranian sites.
Macron and Putin apparently decided at the end of the phone call to remain in contact to “coordinate their actions”—meanwhile, Russia believes Iran is within its rights to develop its own nuclear programme. At least, the two agreed on the need to resolve the crisis through diplomatic channels.
After hanging up with Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron spoke with Volodymyr Zelensky.
