What’s Europe thinking?

Exactly on the same day that marked the completion of 100 days of the invasion of Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron, in unequivocal words, warned against “humiliating” Russia and urged fellow Western nations to keep the doors open to diplomatic engagement with Moscow.

“We must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means,” he said while talking to French media. “I am convinced that it is France’s role to be a mediating power,” he further said while offering a role of a potential mediator to extinguish the flames of the biggest war in Europe since World War II.

This is the first such open offer by any European leader to play the role of a mediator in the Ukrainian war – though it is not yet clear what prompted Macron to make such a polemical statement at this juncture of the war when the Ukrainian government and people are in no mood to resume talks with the Russians. As expected, Macron’s statement has received an immediate rebuke from Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who bluntly rejected this proposal in caustic words: “Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France. Because it is Russia that humiliates itself. We all better focus on how to put Russia in its place. This will bring peace and save lives.”

This episode reflects two main ground realities about the ongoing brutal war in Ukraine as far as the diplomatic resolution of this conflict is concerned. One, there is a growing wedge of difference within the EU and Nato about how to tackle the war in Ukraine, and two, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team are in no mood to return to the negotiating table with a weaker bargaining position. Interestingly, Emmanuel Macron is perhaps the only European leader who has been constantly in touch with Vladimir Putin ever since February 24 when the Russians waged their attack on Ukrainian territory.

The problem with Macron is that he desperately wants to carve a weighty role for himself in this big flashpoint in Europe with an intention to bolster his reputation at home as well as in Europe. There is no denying that Macron has been consistently warning Putin to abstain from making the mistake of continuously pursuing his aggressive plans in Ukraine and, at the same time, France has also provided Caesar howitzers, MILAN anti-tank guided missiles, and Mistral anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine as a part of the combined European support package to bolster the Ukrainian military. But Macron is no more the only one in Europe who is in touch with Vladimir Putin. Now Germany and Italy are also toeing the same line with regard to the Ukrainian invasion.

German Chancellor Scholz also had a lengthy telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week and adopted a similar tone: “There must be a ceasefire in Ukraine as quickly as possible.” In the initial phase of the war, all Europeans were united on one point – push back the Russian intruders at any cost by providing generous supplies of weapons and military warfare to Kyiv.

Till April, there was a consensus among the European leaders and US President Biden that Ukraine was militarily not in a position to recapture any of the lost territory on its own. However, the recent successes of the Ukrainian army have certainly created a new optimism in Europe, but also raised a different kind of concern among some European leaders that a Ukrainian victory could inversely destabilize Russia, making it even more unpredictable and revengeful – and thus put the prospects of normalization of energy channels further dim. That’s why some Western European capitals have suddenly started talking – though discreetly - about a “face-saving” resolution to the conflict, even at the cost of giving up some of the Ukrainian territory in the eastern part.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also knows well that this conflict will eventually be settled on the negotiating table, is not ready to resume any kind of diplomatic engagement with Moscow from a weaker position at this point of time. He is waiting for new weapons from the West, including the precision HIMARS rocket systems from the US that will allow the Ukrainian army to hit Russian positions from a longer range, in a hope to push back Russian forces as far as possible to the borders of Ukraine. He wants to initiate the negotiations with the Russians from a position of strength so as to maximize the chances of a relatively favourable deal in the end.

The writer is a freelance contributor.