Paris: French president Emmanuel Macron, has asked for calm and respect after a heated clash between US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House, warning that Europe can no longer depend on the United States for their safety.
Macron requested “calm” between the two leaders in interviews with the French media, but also to a dialogue about a possible European nuclear “shield”, since the continent could no longer trust the United States.
In interviews, he said that everyone should “return to calm, respect … so that we can move forward … because what is at stake is too important.”
Friday’s row, which saw Zelensky ordered outside the White House, has increased fears in Europe about the United States’s commitment to Ukraine’s struggle against Russia’s invasion.
Macron said that any “disconnection” of the United States in Ukraine “was not of interest”, since forcing Kyiv to “sign a high fire without security guarantees” would mean “his ability to deter Russia, China and others would evaporate the same day.”
On whether I would talk to the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, as he did in the first days of the war, Macron replied that “he would not rule out”, but only “at the right time.”
The French president warned that if Putin was not arrested in Ukraine, “he would undoubtedly focus his attention on Moldova and perhaps further to Romania.”
The Macron media bombardment reached the eve of a meeting on the Ukraine War in London, gathering Zelensky with European allies who are considering how to respond to Trump’s apparent approach with the Kremlin.
Macron proposed a strategic dialogue with European countries that do not have nuclear weapons.
France and Great Britain are the only European countries with a nuclear arsenal.
“We have a shield, they do not. And they can no longer depend on the American nuclear deterrent element. We need a strategic dialogue with those who do not have it, and that would make France stronger,” Macron told the newspaper Le Parisien.
He told the newspaper of the Journal Du Dimanche that he would take between five and ten years to build an independent European defense of NATO.
He also warned that if the United States concludes an agreement with Russia “without Europeans around the table … it would be a break within the alliance.”
“We are in favor of peace,” he insisted, “but not a capitulation that takes place in the context of a defeat or abandonment of the Ukrainians.”
