Macron warns against humiliating Russia over war in Ukraine

French President Emmanuel Macron has warned towards humiliating Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, if and when any peace settlement is agreed.

He instructed reporters in Strasbourg that when the conflict ends, Moscow and Kyiv will ultimately have to take a seat down and negotiate with one another, so any additional tensions will solely serve to the detriment of the scenario.

“We may have a peace to construct tomorrow, allow us to always remember that,” Macron stated on Monday. “I discussed this earlier. We should do that with Ukraine and Russia across the desk. The top of the dialogue and the negotiation will probably be set by Ukraine and Russia. But it surely won’t be finished in denial, nor in exclusion of one another, nor even in humiliation.”

Macron additionally laid out his imaginative and prescient of a broader group of European democracies that will permit for deeper cooperation between non-EU international locations.

Inside this new political union, nations like Ukraine and even the UK might be part of it.

“The European Union, given the extent of its integration and ambition, can’t be within the quick time period the one technique of structuring the European continent,” he stated.

“It’s our historic obligation to reply to that right this moment and to create what I’d name a European political group. This new European organisation would permit European democratic nations adhering to our core values to discover a new area for co-operation on politics, safety, power, transport, infrastructure investments and the motion of individuals, particularly the younger.”

The proposals have been made on Europe Day concurrently Russian President Vladimir Putin’s enormous army parades in Moscow on Victory Day.

For European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen, the distinction between the EU and Russia couldn’t be starker.

“I feel that right this moment speaks volumes and it speaks for itself. On the one hand, you see an autocrat, Vladimir Putin in Moscow and he has had his army parade – that is the one factor he has to supply his folks,” von der Leyen instructed reporters. “After which then again right here within the EP you see a celebration of democracy.”

Monday marked the tip of the Convention on the Way forward for Europe, a year-long course of wherein European residents gave their views on what they need for the way forward for the 27 member bloc.