As of: February 29, 2024, 2:47 p.m
By: Kilian Beck
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Split
Gabriel Attal and Marine Le Pen clash over Macron's statement about ground troops in Ukraine.
The right recently called for a military alliance with Russia.
Paris - There was a heated argument in parliament between French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and the right-wing opposition leader Marine Le Pen from the Rassemblement National (RN).
In a government questioning, Le Pen made a poisonous inquiry about French President Emmanuel Macron's mind games about a ground troop deployment in Ukraine: whether it was a "sacred right" that French soldiers had to "fight for every just cause in the world" when the USA would refuse such missions.
Attal replied: In view of research into close connections between Russia and the RN, one has to ask “whether Putin's troops” have not “already been in France,” the left-liberal daily
Le Monde
quoted both politicians as saying.
Marine Le Pen (only in the picture on the left) and Gabriel Attal (also politically right-wing) clashed in parliament.
© EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP and Bertrand GUAY / AFP;
Montage: IPPEN.MEDIA
Le Pen called for a military alliance with Putin's Russia
Attal further accused Le Pen of demanding a “military alliance with Russia,” as the liberal-conservative
Figaro
wrote.
It was only two years ago that she called for such a pact in the presidential election campaign.
At the time, she even thought this was possible with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had already annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
Le Pen has since demanded that France recognize the annexation.
According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
, Le Pen confirmed all of this
in a parliamentary investigative committee in May 2023.
According to the Washington Post
, the commission concluded
that the RN “has many privileged connections to the Kremlin.”
Macron’s “Ensemble” party alliance does not have its own majority in the chamber.
Current surveys also see French right-wing populists and extremists on the rise.
Macron's ground troops thesis is irritating - France isolated in the Weimar Triangle?
The President's statements caused irritation not only in his own country.
Macron said there was “no consensus” on ground troops but that “nothing should be ruled out in the dynamic”.
The Bonn political scientist Joachim Weber warned
FR.de
of a “terrifying immaturity of European politics” in view of Macron’s juggling with a “major war” and the immediate reaction of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).
The latter shows that Germany and France “have almost opposite values in the major crisis”.
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Scholz emphasized that there would be no ground troops from European or NATO countries on Ukrainian territory.
In Poland, the third state of the so-called Weimar Triangle, people were also irritated by Macron's statements and clearly rejected the idea.
Incidentally, according to
Le Monde and Figaro
, Le Pen's question quoted at the beginning was a quote from the late socialist President François Mitterrand.
(KiBec with dpa)