Emmanuel Macron and his globalist allies are essentially cosplaying as warriors and risk “fomenting war” rather than achieving peace in Ukraine, French opposition leader Marine Le Pen warned over the weekend.
President Macron joined British Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer, recently-minted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Polish PM Donald Tusk on yet another European delegation to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv over the weekend to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky in an attempt to uphold European influence over Trump-led negotiations to end the war with Russia.
Rather than accept the Kremlin’s offer of the first direct talks since the outset of the invasion in 2022, “with no preconditions,” Macron and his counterparts pushed for Vladimir Putin to acquiesce to a 30-day ceasefire as President Zelensky demanded.
While the Euro leaders claimed they had the backing of the White House, President Trump argued that Kyiv should come to the table regardless of whether Putin agreed to a ceasefire, saying Sunday: “At least they will be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible, and if it is not, European leaders, and the U.S., will know where everything stands, and can proceed accordingly.”
Macron apparently rejected this and suggested further sanctions, saying on Monday that Europe and Ukraine “gave the framework,” adding that “either Russia is serious and wants peace, or it is not serious, and we must punish [them] more.”
The French president’s hardliner approach was called into question by Rassemblement National leader and former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who spoke to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on the sidelines of a Patriots of Europe meeting with Italian Deputy PM Matteo Salvini.
Commenting on the Macron-led delegation to Kyiv over the weekend, his longtime rival said: “I wonder what the meaning of this coalition is. Does it want to reach an understanding for peace, or will it end up fomenting war? I would say that Macron put himself in the warrior’s shoes, while I think that France should do exactly the opposite: dedicate all its efforts to acting as a mediator in the direction of peace.”
“I see, here again, a definite design of the European Union. Whenever there is a crisis, Brussels takes advantage of it to try to invent integrated policies to override national sovereignties. Today, it does so with Ukraine and attempts to build a European armament. It does so in an absolutely cynical way,” Le Pen added.
The populist National Rally leader said that while she does not have a “crystal ball”, she had more confidence in President Donald Trump’s approach to the peace negotiations than that of her own president, saying that “Trump has an advantage over Macron because he really takes the goal [of peace] into consideration.”
Matteo Salvini seconded this assessment, writing on X: “While others in Paris or Brussels talk only about weapons and war, Donald Trump is working for peace.”
Although Macron represented one of the few voices in Europe calling for peace talks in the immediate aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion, he has since metamorphosised into one of the staunchest war hawks within the EU.
The French president and British PM Starmer—both of whom are deeply unpopular within their respective countries—have been leading calls for a “coalition of the willing” pan-European military force to be deployed to Ukraine in the event of an armistice agreement. The Kremlin has claimed this would represent an “escalation” in the proxy war with the West.
Critics have also warned that such a force could lay the groundwork for the formation of a fully-fledged EU Army, which has been a longstanding ambition of Macron and fellow globalists within the bloc like European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. However, the French president and Starmer have so far been unsuccessful in convincing European allies to commit any soldiers to the so-called peacekeeping force project.
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