French President Emmanuel Macron has called the next 15 days “critical” and welcomed US President Donald Trump’s intention to provide security guarantees for Ukraine.
In an interview with public broadcaster LCI, made public on 19 August, he said that in the next few weeks, we need to do everything possible to make sure that a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin takes place. “Then, by design, a trilateral summit could take place in early September,” Macron added.
The specific content of the security guarantees is not yet known, although Macron said that “the British, French, Germans, Turks and others are ready to conduct operations – not on the front line, not provocatively, but support operations in the air, at sea and on land”. At the same time, he warned that Russia was a destabilising force and President Vladimir Putin had “rarely stuck to his commitments”: “one thing I know is that since the end of 2007-2008, President Putin has rarely stuck to his commitments. He has constantly been a destabilising force and has sought to redefine borders to expand his power,” the French president said.