Russian President Vladimir Putin spent much of his marathon talks with Emanuel Macron this week on the Ukraine crisis, talking about injustices dating back to the end of the Cold War, two sources close to the French president said.
Regarding Monday’s meeting in Moscow, sources note that Macron was amazed at how different Putin was from the man he had met at his summer residence on the French Riviera three years ago.
“(Putin) taught him a five-hour lesson in historical revisionism,” said one source, describing how the Russian leader expressed his belief that the West had been violating its 1997 commitments to Moscow with NATO enlargement to include states of the former Soviet bloc.
“So he went on for hours, rewriting history from 1997 onwards. He is drowning you in these long monologues. And the president (Macron) was trying again and again to turn the debate to today’s issues,” the source said.
The comments came as Russia, which has amassed more than 100,000 troops near its border with Ukraine, held military exercises in neighboring Belarus and the Black Sea, and Western leaders again warned of large-scale war.
“These more than five hours of talks make us realize how different Putin’s today is from Putin three years ago,” said the source, who was briefed on the content of the talks between the two leaders. named.
A Kremlin spokesman did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
Putin himself speaks with growing discomfort about what he calls the West’s failure to address Russia’s security concerns.
“You know, we’ve been trying to talk to them about avoiding certain actions for 30 years. What we are getting in response is a complete disregard for our concerns,” the Russian leader told a joint news conference with Macron on Monday.
According to Reuters, Putin’s actions make it clear that he has become more aggressive, including the crackdown on his domestic opponents, pressure on freelance journalists and now the massive military deployment on the border with Ukraine.
But the meeting with Macron was a rare opportunity for a Western leader to spend a long time with Putin and try to understand, face to face, his mental state.
During their talks, the French leader was alone with Putin, without assistants and only one interpreter.
According to a French source, Putin returned several times during talks on the 1997 NATO agreement that paved the way for three former Soviet bloc countries – Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic – to join the Alliance.
Putin, the sources said, described the agreement as a betrayal of the Alliance’s previous promises not to extend it. NATO members deny that such promises have ever been made.
The Russian president also referred to the 2014 Meidan Square uprising in Kiev – which led to the ouster of a pro-Russian leader amid mass street protests – and the election of Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 as president of Ukraine.
“He said it was a coup and that Zelensky is under US control,” one source said.
After Monday’s talks, Macron stressed to his staff that when he hosted Putin in France in 2019, the Kremlin leader seemed “less tough and less focused on history” than this time, according to a second source.
Source: Capital
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