Is Emmanuel Macron opening a door for a Franco-Russian rapprochement?

“NATO is brain dead.” It is with this loaded sentence that the French president judged, in an interview given to the British daily "The Economist", NATO's inability to respond to the very marked differences in positions between the Europeans, Washington and Ankara. , particularly regarding the Syrian crisis.

Emmanuel Macron also carries a charge that can be described as "undiplomatic" against the unilateral decision of the American president to withdraw his troops from northern Syria, an action having been perceived by the Turkish president as a tacit agreement to trigger the military operation against the Kurds of the YPG which, according to the latest count, will have cost the lives of nearly 500 Kurdish fighters who, until then, were fighting alongside American and French forces to neutralize Daesh.

But if the positions expressed by the French president focus the media debate in Europe, particularly in the countries closest to NATO, it is above all the opening made towards Moscow which appears to be the richest in potential consequences.

Indeed, without being particularly tender with Russian leaders, President Macron called on Moscow to get closer to its European partners, if Russia did not want to become, in the more or less long term, a satellite of Beijing.

It is true that by intensifying commercial and military relations with China, the Kremlin risks putting itself in a situation of economic dependence, a strategy in which Beijing excels. And to see, little by little, the markers of Russia's independence, which today are the pride of the country, coming under the direct or indirect control of the Chinese authorities.

Already, in several Oblasts of Eastern Siberia, the Russian population is smaller in number than the population of Chinese sharecroppers, exploiting agricultural land abandoned by the Russians who, for many, prefer to migrate to “European” Russia beyond the Urals. .

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