"
Putin went up to the coconut tree and we do not know how he will come down"
: while Emmanuel Macron was preparing to meet his Russian counterpart, on Monday, a recognized expert in geopolitics, the Frenchman François Heisbourg, delivered his analyzes to the independent site Meduza .
Thus summed up, what way out of the crisis can be envisaged for the Kremlin, between military mobilization (around Ukraine, particularly in Belarus), security requirements and diplomatic pressure?
The multiple exchanges that preceded the meeting in Moscow, and its holding, late Monday afternoon, opened up avenues and sketched answers.
Admittedly, the equation still conceals many unknowns.
But at least some parameters have been clarified.
And first this: the assumption that the Russian demands, maximalist and considered inadmissible, would have been formulated to be rejected and better justify an invasion of Ukraine.
Diplomatic steps
“This assertion is, to date in any case, invalidated”,
underlines Arnaud Dubien, the director of the Franco-Russian Observatory in Moscow.
And even if the sword of Damocles of armed conflict still hangs over eastern Europe, the visit to the Kremlin by the French president, the first Western head of state to meet Putin since the beginning of this crisis, will have opened a breach in which other diplomatic steps could unfold.
"It is legitimate for Russia to raise the question of its own security
," declared the President of the Republic on Sunday at the
JDD
.
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On December 25, Moscow transmitted to the United States and NATO two draft treaties
"aimed at developing legal
(and therefore written, editor's note) guarantees
for Russia's security"
and called on Westerners to
"immediate »
.
According to Russia's wishes, the members of the Atlantic Alliance would undertake never again to enlarge NATO, in particular to Ukraine, and to carry out no
"military activity on the territory of Ukraine and in other countries". 'other countries of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia'
.
Russia drew attention to its demands and drew the Americans into the conversation.
It's a tactical success
Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center
It was also a question, among other obligations, of prohibiting the United States from creating military bases in any country of the former USSR that is not a member of NATO, as well as from
"using their infrastructure for any military activity or develop bilateral military cooperation”
.
A return, therefore, to the situation that prevailed at the end of the 1990s, at the time of the first post-Cold War enlargements.
These proposals were immediately deemed
"unacceptable"
in Western capitals.
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“Nobody seriously thought that the West could sign this Russian version of the treaty. Of course not
,” comments Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Center in Moscow.
“It's a kind of shock therapy.
By doing so, Russia drew attention to its demands and drew Americans into the conversation.
It's a tactical success,”
adds the expert.
And since the end of December, the internal message delivered to the military and diplomats has been clearly: keep up the pressure to obtain concessions.
Two tracks
Admittedly, the written response received on January 26 to the "draft treaties" drawn up by the Russians was considered disappointing by Vladimir Putin.
But Moscow, by responding the same day to Washington and NATO, through the pen of the head of diplomacy Sergey Lavrov, took the opportunity to instil in the dialogue a key notion for the Russians - and since then to install it in the field of vision of Westerners: the indivisibility of security.
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According to this principle, contained in two declarations signed in Istanbul (1999) and Astana (2010), an OSCE state cannot strengthen its security to the detriment of another state.
If a positive response to the maximalist demands of the Russians quickly proved impossible, the West half-opened two tracks, both distinct but possibly interconnected, without Putin giving guarantees of
“de-escalation”
.
First track, followed by Emmanuel Macron facing his Russian interlocutor, that of the “Normandy format” (France, Germany, Ukraine, Russia).
Under French impetus, the group met last month in Paris after two years of fallow, and a next meeting is planned in Berlin.
The reactivation of the Minsk-2 agreements (February 2015), today subjects of contention, is conditioned by the attitude of Russia but also of Kiev, where Emmanuel Macron will try to obtain commitments from his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
Impossible to formalize as it is, the most realistic prospect of Ukraine not joining NATO could, one way or another, be taken into account in a future settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. , if
"Russian security concerns" are to be addressed.
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Second track for a possible compromise: measures affecting the overall security of the Old Continent. Concretely, it would be a question of opening discussions on a whole series of fields, as revealed by the American answer published on February 2 by the newspaper
El Païs
: renunciation, subject to conditions, by Washington, of the permanent deployment of forces and systems strike in Ukraine, transparency and "deconfliction" measures linked to the holding of military exercises, discussions on short and intermediate range missiles...
"The Americans propose to reflect on the framework for the deployment of intermediate nuclear forces, on transparency of military exercises or arms control in neighboring countries of Russia”,
analyzes Marie Dumoulin, expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR
).
"This move could ideally lead to something like the old Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, which was negotiated in Soviet times
," she adds
.
“For this, Russia would have to undertake symmetrically not to deploy troops and military equipment in a certain number of regions”
, stresses Marie Dumoulin again.
The ball is in Moscow's court, which is far from having given the green light.
The road promises to be long.
And everything will depend first of all on the
“signals of de-escalation”
that Emmanuel Macron came to Moscow to seek.