On January 16, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would send another 40 scalp cruise missiles to Ukraine. Russia bombed Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, later that day, claiming French mercenaries were stationed there and providing a list of names that the French military says is false. Not long after, the French discovered 193 websites set up to undermine public support for Ukraine in France (as well as Germany and Poland), run by a Russian firm from Crimea. A few days later, the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said that Russian air traffic controllers had threatened to shoot down a French plane patrolling over the Black Sea.
In recent months, France has documented an intensified Russian campaign to sow division, discredit the country and test its military. Russian security services, according to French sources, ordered the stars of David painted on the walls of Paris last October, in order to incite inter-religious tensions. In March, cyber attacks temporarily disabled some French government websites, and hackers stole data from its employment agency. With additional help from Russia's supporters in France, Russian bot farms fueled the Paris bedbug stories, used a fake French news report to fabricate an alleged assassination attempt on Macron, and spread vile false rumors about his wife Brigitte.
At the heart of this systematic targeting, people close to the president say, is a change that continues to baffle many observers: Macron's transformation from a leader who sought to work with Vladimir Putin to one of the most belligerent voices in Europe. The president who once called on the allies not to "humiliate" Russia, now calls for the defeat of Russia, tells the allies not to be "cowards" and warns that a Russian victory would mark the "end of European security". Macron has not spoken to Putin since September 2022. On February 26, he refused to rule out sending ground forces to help Ukraine.
What explains this change? At the basic level, as Bruno Tertre from the Montaigne Institute says, Macron was "attacked by reality". Putin lied to him and manipulated him. Macron's diplomatic outreach before the war was unsuccessful, even if he knew at the time that it was high-risk. The murder of Alexei Navalny in February served as an additional shock. As one former minister told "Mond", Macron was "radicalized by disappointment".
Ukraine's problems on the ground, as well as the possibility of another presidential term for Donald Trump, have made confronting Russia more urgent. This comes at a time when Macron already concluded, in a speech in Bratislava last May, that Ukraine's inclusion in both the European Union and NATO would actually strengthen, not weaken, his ambition for European collective defense.
"France has believed for decades that, when it comes to Europe, less is better," wrote Selia Belin from the European Council for Foreign Affairs, in a commentary for the American magazine "Foreign Affairs".
Russian aggression, she notes, has transformed the case for a wider EU. France's ten-year security commitment to Ukraine is now enshrined in a bilateral agreement signed by Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky in February. Its value is three billion euros in 2024 and includes France's promise to support Ukraine's entry into NATO.
Skeptics continue to question the sincerity of Macron's makeover, pointing to France's efforts to restrict Ukrainian agricultural exports. Nice words are one thing, concrete action is another. Figures from the Kiel Institute in Germany suggest that France's bilateral military aid is a fraction of Germany's, although the latest figures only go back to mid-January. With a budget deficit of 5,5 percent of GDP in 2023, France is in financial trouble, its military has little equipment to spare, and its industrial sector is struggling to produce things much faster.
Others dismiss Macron's hard-line stance as an election campaign, intended to differentiate his geopolitics from that of Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally (RN) was once financed by a Russian bank. Although this is indeed the theme of the campaign, its effectiveness is questionable. It looks like RN will trample his party in the European Parliament elections in June. The idea of sending ground forces to Ukraine is deeply unpopular in France.
Significantly, Macron's change of heart received the most approval from Europe's once skeptical eastern fringes.
"I think it's honest," says Niku Popescu, the former foreign minister of Moldova. "Macron concluded that the security of the EU depends on the security of its neighbors".
Macron supports Estonia's idea of joint EU borrowing to pay for weapons for Ukraine, an idea hated in austere Germany. French diplomats have recently drawn up alarming scenarios about the consequences of a Russian victory. Macron, says a French military source, no longer harbors any doubts about Moscow's expansionist ambitions. If Russia wins, the president said last month, Putin will not stop at Ukraine. Now Macron must act on his new understanding.
Translation: A.Š.
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