War in Ukraine / Macron is right: Europe should talk to Putin |
‘Macron is right’ is not one of those statements I honestly expected to find myself writing, but when the French president said, ‘I think it will become useful again to talk to Vladimir Putin,’ after the cup-half-full negotiations in Brussels over continued financial aid to Ukraine, he was spot on.
‘I believe that it’s in our interest as Europeans and Ukrainians to find the right framework to re-engage this discussion’ with Moscow, he said, and that this should be done ‘in coming weeks’.
Of course, there are some who equate talking to Putin as somehow legitimising him, or meaning the same thing as negotiations. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has, for example, boasted that she has in the past been able to browbeat countries into not talking to the Russians.
Putin needs to be made to listen – but only if we have something useful to say to him
However, Macron was simply recognising that Russia is not going away and that the current pattern, whereby Donald Trump and his people do all the running, and a fire brigade of European leaders rush across the Atlantic to try and talk him down when they fear he is about to promise Putin too much, is reactive and short-sighted. ‘Otherwise, we’ll end up talking amongst ourselves with [Trump’s] negotiators who will engage with the........