French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday he may withdraw the highest honor for merit the French state has awarded to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, but said he would wait for the “right time” to decide.
In 2006, Jacques Chirac awarded Putin the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, at a time when relations between Moscow and Paris were close. But since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, everything has changed: the international community condemned the Russian military offensive and the European Union imposed a series of tough economic sanctions.
Macron’s statements were made after France’s head of state awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, after he had not yet formally withdrawn the award from Putin.
After the European Council, at which European leaders considered increasing arms supplies to Ukraine, Macron admitted that the issuance of Putin’s medal was “symbolic but important”.
But while Macron said he believed he had the right to withdraw the award, he added: “It’s not a decision I made today.”
These are decisions that are “always important and I think you have to evaluate the right time to make them,” Macron added.
It should be recalled that the same award, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, was awarded in 2001 to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who later returned it to France in 2018. In a statement, the Syrian presidency said that Assad was not honored to have received “this award from an American slave regime, which supports terrorist organizations in Syria and attacks a UN member state in flagrant violation of the fundamentals and principles of international law” .
Source: DN
