French Ministers Visit Moscow in First Such Meeting Since 2014
French Ministers Visit Moscow in First Such Meeting Since 2014
(Bloomberg) -- France’s foreign and defense ministers will meet their Russian counterparts Monday in Moscow, a further step in President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to refresh relations with Russia.
It’s the first such visit since 2014, and follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Aug. 19 trip to Macron’s summer residence, just before the Biarritz G-7 meeting.
“We’re not going to Moscow to lift the sanctions,” French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Sunday in an interview with CNews television and Europe 1 radio. He said there needs to be progress toward “stabilization in Ukraine, then sanctions could progressively be revised, but we’re not there.”
Annual meetings between French and Russian defense and foreign ministers began in 2002 but were suspended after Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, leading to rounds of sanctions from the European Union. Macron has criticized Russia’s cyber-meddling in other country’s elections and its crackdown on domestic opposition, but at the same time he and his aides have argued that working with Russia is essential to solving a slew of foreign policy crises from Syria to Libya to Iran.
“Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic error because it would isolate Russia and only increase international tensions,” Macron said in an Aug. 27 speech to France’s ambassadors, where he claimed a “deep state” within the foreign ministry was hampering his outreach to Moscow. “At the same time, we can’t be weak with Russia and forget all the past disagreements, the past conflicts. We must deeply rethink this structure.”
The London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs said in a Sept. 5 report that “there is no world leader with a more contradictory attitude toward Russia than Emmanuel Macron.”
The French ministers’ trip comes days after Russia and Ukraine agreed on an exchange of prisoners that Le Drian said showed “the willingness to renew dialog” between the bitter adversaries. “The conflict in Ukraine will be at the heart of the agenda in the meeting of the cooperation council that I will attend in Moscow,” Le Drian said. French officials say other subjects to be discussed include the Iranian nuclear accord, the war in Syria, and the military standoff in Libya.
Le Drian will hold a press conference Monday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. In the CNews interview on Sunday he called for Russia to remove mines and heavy weapons in the annexed areas, and for Ukraine to start institutional reforms agreed in the Minsk peace deal.
French Defense Minister Florence Parly met her U.S. counterpart Mark Esper in Paris Saturday and said that “we exchanged in full transparency on the opening the president of the Republic wants to pursue with Russia.”
Esper responded that “Russia needs to change its behavior,” listing its invasions of Georgia and Crimea, the intimidation of Baltic nations, and its cyber attacks. “Our aim would be to try to get them on a better path.”
--With assistance from Francois de Beaupuy.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gregory Viscusi in Paris at gviscusi@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Andrew Davis, James Cone
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