Sign language.
The missing podium in the center was a vote for Le Pen.
By Virginie Malingre and Philippe Ricard
The French presidents, Emmanuel Macron, and Russian, Vladimir Putin, during a press conference at the Kremlin, in Moscow, Monday, February 7, 2022.
It is rare (click here) for international news to find such an echo in a French election. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which began on February 24, will have impacted the presidential campaign and placed the question of relations with Vladimir Putin at the heart of the debates in the second round. As war returns to Europe, the subject has become a fault line between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
The conflict has delayed the start of the Head of State's campaign. Both before and after the outbreak of hostilities, Emmanuel Macron has sought, in vain so far, to mediate between Moscow and kyiv. His voluntarism was initially rather well perceived by public opinion, before showing its limits, as the fighting dragged on.
For Mr. Macron, the dialogue with the Kremlin remains justified by the concern to find a way out of the war and to restore, in the long term, the European security order, brought to the ground by the Ukrainian conflict. However, telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin were interrupted between the two towers, due, explains the Elysée, to the discovery of the atrocities committed against civilians in the localities once occupied by the Russian army in the kyiv region, such as Boucha. "Macron no longer has much interest in spending his time on the phone with Putin, while the French have the impression that it is useless" , observes Sébastien Maillard, the director of the Jacques Delors Institute....
