Anyway guys again…Macron is a specialist in keeping the feet in multiple places at once.
When it comes to the EU politicians declaration you have to put a lot of context on them because there’s a ton of moving parts and different interests, it’s not like in the US where you have a country, a president and two parties.
I am not surprised at all given the situation after all the years I have been involved in the EU politics and diplomacy.
If he loses credibility internationally by being passive in the Ukrainian thing he will lose approval, because French people believe they are the leaders in Europe (and militarily they’re indeed).
If he gets too much militarily involved he will lose approval in favor of Melenchon who is mostly supported due to his stance over Ukraine.
That’s why at the same time in less than 1 day he said:
1) The summit is not meant to discuss about military involvement in Ukraine. Netherlands PM Mark Rutte helped him here further denying that there was no intention to escalate the situation as the Slovakian (Putin’s friend) PM tried to say.
2) We cannot rule out boots on the Ukrainian ground BUT there’s no consensus. Again nothing new here because especially if you think about things which can potentially happen. Nothing is impossible in this world.
3) We are not at war with the Russians, which doesn’t need any explanation. It just contradicts what he said.
Added bonus, during this summit countries on the Russian to do list resulted to be: Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and the US.
Respectively: the most neutral country of EU together with Austria and Ireland, the biggest and closest nuclear power in Europe, a close friend in the end, another even closer friend, pacific US twin, biggest nuclear power of the world.
All of this does not make any sense, this is all intended to put pressure in the US regarding the Ukraine funding bill, as EU has reached capacity and there will never be consensus in emitting common debt to help Ukraine further, to regain prestige without jeopardizing his party at the next elections, to try to regain the interest of the normal people about Ukraine which again, as a French/Italian I can tell you is less than zero.