The President of the National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, believes that the best way out of the war would be immediate negotiations, as both a Ukrainian victory and a Russian victory would not mean anything good for the world. She said this in an interview with El Pais.
Le Pen has for years been the French politician most closely associated with Russia. Her party received a €9 million loan from a Russian bank in 2014, and she has said she shares Putin’s global vision.
After the fullscale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she distanced herself from Putin and now states: “I believe in the sovereignty of nations: if Ukraine wants to join NATO, if that is its will, I don’t see who can oppose it.”
“When a country like Russia attacks another country and threatens its sovereignty, there can be no equidistance, you have to take a stand,” Le Pen added, saying she was in favour of giving Ukraine defensive weapons but against offensive weapons.
In her view, the best solution to the conflict would be immediate negotiations.
“If Russia wins the war, it will be a disaster because all countries with a territorial conflict will think they can solve it with weapons,” Le Pen said.
“If Ukraine wins, it will mean that NATO has entered the war, because I am convinced that Ukraine without NATO power cannot defeat Russia militarily. And that would mean that World War III has been launched,” she added.
She also has a third option. “If we continue to slowly supply weapons to Ukraine, as we are doing now, we face a new Hundred Years’ War [a long medieval conflict between England and France], which, given the human cost, will be a terrible drama,” Le Pen said.
In turn, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau is sceptical of French initiatives aimed at some form of negotiation between Russia and Ukraine.
“We do not see, unfortunately, any signs that Russia is ready to reconsider its policy of territorial conquest. However, the possible generation of such negotiations should not entail any special guarantees for Russia, except, of course, for the observance of international law, which are guarantees of peace for all other states,” the Polish Foreign Minister stressed.
