The relationship between Russia and France is not looking good. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched almost a year ago, relations between the two countries have slowly deteriorated as Western countries have supplied Ukraine with weapons. A tension at its height with the prospect of the delivery of heavy tanks to Kyiv by Paris and other capitals.
economic and military warfare
Invited Monday night on BFMTV, Piotr Tolstoy, vice-president of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, confirmed this tension between Paris and Moscow.
“Of course, France for us is an enemy,” he said.
From his point of view, the justifications are multiple. “France has been waging an economic war against my country for eight years, and France has been supplying the Ukrainians with military material. France, like Germany and other European countries that are participating in the war, on the Ukrainian side, in a way military,” added Pyotr Tolstoy.
“Thanks to European help, the war has lasted a year,” he said. According to him, this involvement of Western countries is the reason why it is currently impossible to have “negotiations and end the war.” “It is your responsibility and not ours. We have time ahead of us, but because of you I have doubts”.
What red line?
As for the future of this Franco-Russian relationship, whose viability had been one of Emmanuel Macron’s main objectives since the beginning of his first presidential term, Piotr Tolstoy specified that “it will depend on your participation in this war.”
“You’re going to give tanks, then planes, then send in the Foreign Legion or whatever. As soon as foreign soldiers are on Ukrainian territory, NATO soldiers, it would be, as the Americans like to say, a red line,” he explained. the politician.
However, he reminds us that Russia “has no interest in seeing this continue for two or three years.”
felt russian
The growing hostility of the Russians towards French policy outside the Ukrainian conflict had already been mentioned on BFMTV on January 11 by the spokesman of the Russian Embassy in France, Alexander Makogonov.
“We cannot consider France a friendly country,” he said, before qualifying: “I cannot call France an enemy, it is impossible, but our resentment is very deep, we are disappointed by the political line of the French.”
For him, the damage is particularly deep in the Russian collective imagination, while France, “which we have always considered a friendly country”, now provides “tanks and weapons to kill the Russians”.
Source: BFM TV
