Macron is too soft on Putin, claims François Hollande
President Macron’s predecessor has accused him, and also his own former partner, of indulging Vladimir Putin and blaming the West for the war in Ukraine.
François Hollande, the Socialist Party head of state who stepped down in 2017, rebuked Macron and Ségolène Royal, his long-standing companion and former cabinet minister, for being part of a French establishment that is soft on the Russian president and fooled by him.
“Emmanuel Macron is typical of a part of the political class which has always been quite indulgent, not to Russia but to Vladimir Putin,” Hollande told Inter radio in France. He said that their thinking was that “in reality it’s our fault and that we didn’t talk enough to Putin, that we are supposed to have encircled him and even attacked him”.
Hollande added that Macron appeared to have been duped by Putin in his numerous telephone conversations and meetings with him. “I had numerous talks with him [Putin] and what always struck me was his capacity for spouting lies,” he said.
Hollande, 68, joined a row which erupted this week after Royal, who was disowned by her own Socialist Party and condemned by Olivier Véran, Macron’s government spokesman, made an outspoken attack on Ukraine. Their differences echo softening public support for sanctions against Russia and tension between the president and his diplomatic service over his continuing belief that he should keep open his links with the Russian leader.
Royal, 68, the mother of four children with Hollande, voiced doubts about reported Russian atrocities against Ukrainians and accused President Zelensky of spreading false claims in order to block attempts to negotiate peace.
“Everyone knows that there exists war propaganda through fear,” she said. “When Mr Zelensky went round the parliaments of Europe [reporting atrocities], the peace process stopped. He used it.”
She said that she doubted the Russians had shelled the maternity clinic at Mariupol or the massacre of civilians in the suburb of Bucha, in Kyiv, after the February invasion despite western news coverage of the events. “It was monstrous to broadcast things like that merely to interrupt the peace process,” she said.
Macron has spoken with President Putin a number of times since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Royal later said she may have been wrong about some of the details but she stuck by her overall view.
Hollande said Royal had a poor understanding of the conflict. “If you go down that road, the authoritarian regimes will have won,” he said. The former president has often sniped at Macron, who left his post as a minister in his administration to run against him as an independent in the 2017 campaign. Hollande subsequently withdrew from the race in December 2016.
Véran voiced outrage that Royal appeared to be blaming the victims of Russian aggression. “The war crimes are documented. Denying them is an insult to the people who have been murdered, raped and tortured. Saying the opposite is [Russian] propaganda,” he said.
Macron told French ambassadors last week that he rejected calls to cut off communication with Putin. Russia must not be allowed to win in Ukraine but he remained ready to mediate in negotiations for peace if and when Zelensky believes the time is right, he said.
Catherine Colonna, the French foreign minister, took a noticeably harder line, telling her ambassadors that Russia was determined to destroy western civilisation, an idea that Macron has not expressed.
Royal’s views are shared by much of the radical left and populist right-wing parties which now dominated the opposition in the French parliament. An Elabe opinion poll last week found that 72 per cent of the public support sanctions against Russia but 74 per cent also believe that they are not having any effect. In March 78 per cent supported sanctions. Since March there has been an eight-point rise to 27 per cent of French people who now believe that sanctions should be halted because they are hurting them more than the Russians.
