Miguel Medina / AFP
Emmanuel Macron during a ceremony marking the 81st anniversary of the Liberation of Bormes-les-Mimosas during the Second World War, on August 17, 2025.
POLICY – Hard words before his departure for Washington. Emmanuel Macron attacked this Sunday, August 17 at the “Somnambules” Who “Did not want to see the threat that seemed so far away on the borders of Europe” et “We led us to disaster”during a commemoration of the anniversary of the release of Bormes-les-Mimosas (Var), drawing a parallel with the war in Ukraine.
“War returned to Europe and those who think that it is very far away, that it does not concern us, are the same sleepwalkers as those of yesterday”added the President of the Republic, on the eve of a meeting between American presidents Donald Trump and Ukrainian Voldymyr Zelensky, which he will also assist as well as several European officials.
“Those who think that one can be free by being weak, those who think that one can be free by continuing to live as if there was not the war and a world of predators at our doors are those who – they may not be answered – prepare the defeat of tomorrow”insisted the head of state, considering that it was “Those who have already decided to be subject” without citing them by name.
Russian diplomacy replied to Emmanuel Macron’s words
Emmanuel Macron still called for “Prepare us, to arm us, to be a nation with moral strength which will never put one knee on the ground and do it in European”.
A few hours earlier, after a videoconferencing meeting with the “Coalition of volunteers” Allies of kyiv, the French president said that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, did not want peace but a « capitulation » from Ukraine. For his part said he wanted “A robust, sustainable peace, that is to say respectful of international law, (…) which respects sovereignty, the territorial integrity of all countries”.
Reacting to the words of Emmanuel Macron, Russian diplomacy spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused the French leader of the French leader on Sunday on Telegram “Abject lie”. According to her, Moscow offered a “Pacific regulation” Conflict for seven years in the context of the Minsk agreements which had followed the annexation in 2014 of Ukrainian Crimea by Russia and the beginning of a war in eastern Ukraine between kyiv and the separatists supported by the Kremlin.
Maria Zakharova also reproached Emmanuel Macron for having shimped in kyiv “A victory on the battlefield by understanding perfectly that it is impossible”, delivered weapons to Ukraine and made “False promises to the Ukrainians”.