PARIS — Four days before the invasion of Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron is on the phone with Vladimir Putin of Russia in a desperate effort to start negotiations. By the 20th of February, Macron and his team of advisors are confident that they have persuaded Putin to accept a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden in Geneva. But rather than agreeing to the meeting, the Russian leader starts to stall and shifts the topic to sports.
In a flat voice, Putin says, “It’s a proposal that merits consideration. But I suggest we ask our advisers to call each other as soon as possible if you want us to agree on how it should be formulated. However, please understand that I concur in general.
You confirm that you concur in principle, and I ask that our teams try to put together a joint statement after this call. argues Macron.
Since I’m currently at the gym, I wanted to go ice skating, to be completely honest with you. I’ll call my advisors, though, before I start my workout. … I thank you, Mr. President,” Putin says in French at the end.
Macron laughs as he hangs up.
Following the call, Emmanuel Bonne, Macron’s diplomatic advisor, is captured on camera dancing a little while another person says, “Frankly, that’s very good.” Following the call, a statement from the Elysée announced that Putin and Biden had both agreed to hold a summit on Ukraine.
However, the summit never took place. Putin formally recognized two separatist provinces in eastern Ukraine the day after his conversation with Macron. Additionally, he began a full-scale invasion on February 24.
A documentary about Macron’s unsuccessful approach to diplomacy with Russia, “A President, Europe, and War,” which was released late last week, prominently features scenes like this. It was a topic that dominated news coverage for weeks as Macron spoke with Putin on the phone for hundreds of hours, at best getting empty promises and at worst getting taken for a ride outright.
The audio of the two leaders’ conversation, according to Michel Duclos, a former ambassador and adviser at the Montaigne Institute, shows that the Kremlin was outsmarting the French president.
Knowing Russia, Duclos observed, “this demonstrates to me how Putin enjoyed leading a great western leader up the garden path.” You catch hints of him mocking flippancy.
Inside the diplomatic staff at the Elysee
The documentary’s fly-on-the-wall access to the Elysée, which is infamously secretive and wary of the media, makes it breathtaking.
Guy Lagache, the director, was able to capture Macron’s phone calls to world leaders and his advisers discussing the Ukraine war as it was happening. It is unclear whether the other leaders were aware of this at the time.
It makes for compelling television, with a protracted segment in which you hear a tough-talking Macron telling Putin that “we don’t give a damn about the proposals from the separatists” and lecturing the Russian president about his poor choice of legal advisors. It also cruelly highlights the failures of Macron’s diplomatic efforts to end the war.
The movie supports what Elysée insiders have long suspected: Macron oversees France’s foreign policy alone, with the help of a small group of advisors. Only once in the entire 115-minute documentary does Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s foreign minister, appear, and he is never heard speaking. The conversations between Macron and Putin over the phone—Putin listens in on the calls and discusses the Elysée’s official statements on the subject—are discussed by Macron’s diplomatic advisor Bonne. Macron’s advisors don’t appear to be seriously opposing the president in any way.
The Washington correspondent for Le Monde, Piotr Smolar, observed on Twitter that “[the film] shows a diplomacy that is operated by a handful of people, as if they were running a start-up, as if everything could be resolved with the mobile numbers of “Olaf,” “Volodymyr,” and “Vladimir” (without neglecting the importance of direct contacts of course).
In contrast to other western leaders who must contend with powerful parliaments or foreign affairs ministries, French presidents typically have more influence over their nation’s foreign policy. But according to Duclos, the film highlights the flaws in a highly centralized diplomatic apparatus.
Foreign policy has never been more unique than it is now, according to Duclos. The movie demonstrates that the Elysée’s total centralization of foreign policy has reached its breaking point.
Particularly noteworthy is Macron’s unwavering dedication to diplomatic efforts with Russia and his continued phone conversations with Putin, albeit much less frequently now than before the April discovery of war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
On February 7, 2022, in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures with French President Emmanuel Macron during a joint press conference | Thibault Camus/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
On his return from a long-awaited trip to Kyiv last month, Macron admits in the documentary that his diplomatic efforts to stop Putin have failed.
We talked and spent a lot of time trying to involve others and stop the war. With Vladimir Putin, I thought we could find a path based on trust and thoughtful discussion,” he said, adding that there is still “so much to do.”
domestic front
Despite skepticism in the Western press and public criticism from the Polish prime minister, who compared Macron’s efforts to negotiating with Hitler, the documentary’s director rarely presses his interview subjects on the Elysée’s strategy toward Putin. Instead, the movie, which was originally intended to be a documentary about European affairs, provides important insight into Macron’s motivation for his diplomatic efforts on both the domestic and international levels.
In a videotaped phone debrief with his advisers, Bonne claims he was concerned the initiative might fail given the information the Americans were providing on Russian military deployments when Putin agreed to meet with Biden. As a result, it “shows we made our best efforts” and that France “wasn’t dragged [into the conflict] by the allies,” Macron responds, the Elysée should proceed with announcing the summit.
If Putin makes a mistake, it will be much harder for him to maintain his credibility, in my opinion.
In the event that he rejects [the summit initiative]. I can say the guy lied to me and here is the proof because I’m very logical,” he said.
According to a survey conducted by the organization IFOP last month, a majority of French people (79%) still have a favorable opinion of Ukraine.
But while Macron’s diplomatic approach may have won over many domestic supporters, it hasn’t won over his allies and EU partners in Eastern Europe, who have long regarded Macron’s efforts with suspicion.
What Duclos called “the cost for him and for France, in terms of credibility with the allies and with his European partners” is what Macron does not appear to understand.
What harm has Macron’s relationship with Putin also suffered? He appears to have been rejected, and that is not the way to be taken seriously, the man said.
