French President Emmanuel MacronMOSCOW, Feb 7 French President Emmanuel Macron may take Angela Merkel's place , who resigned as German chancellor, in the role of a key negotiator with Russia from the Western countries, the author of the analytical material on the website of the CNN television channel believes. Macron will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, and will arrive in Kiev on Tuesday. According to the French leader, the purpose of his visit to Russia is to prevent the escalation and deterioration of the situation around Ukraine. The Kremlin notes that the presidents of the Russian Federation and France will primarily discuss security guarantees at the talks.Will Macron's Moscow hopes come true As noted, Macron began laying the groundwork for his visit to Moscow long before it was announced. Since mid-December, Macron has had five telephone conversations with Putin, according to the Elysee Palace. Meanwhile, Kremlin statistics show that in the past two months of the escalation around Ukraine, the Russian leader has only spoken twice with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden. With Olaf Scholz, successor to Merkel, who resigned in early December, Putin time, he spoke only once, the material says. At the same time, in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea to Russia as a result of a referendum, Merkel and Putin held 35 conversations — only in September. This is more than three times more than with former President Barack Obama (ten) and almost six times more than with former British Prime Minister David Cameron — six. «Putin respected Merkel for her firmness and long tenure as head of state . In Scholz, who leads a shaky coalition, there is little of this firmness,» the author of the publication notes.The Foreign Ministry accused the West of spinning the myth about Russia's plans to attack Ukraine. When assessing Macron's prospects as a successful Western negotiator, the analyst notes a similar precedent in 2008, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy played an effective role as a peacekeeper during the Russian-Georgian conflict. He recalls that Sarkozy, in addition to national leadership, led the European Union on the basis of a rotating presidency of the European Union. Now the post has traveled through 27 countries on the continent to return to France during the next crisis. «Putin must recognize in Macron, as he acknowledged in Sarkozy, a politician with a personal charm and dynamism unlike most other European leaders today. This is something what he respects,” the author concludes. The meeting between Macron and Putin will take place less than two weeks after the talks between the political advisers of the Normandy Format leaders (France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine) in Paris, which took place on January 26. As a result of this meeting, a joint communiqué was adopted on the need to observe the ceasefire in Donbass and to hold the next meeting in Berlin in two weeks. In Paris, they pointed to progress in the negotiations in the Normandy format. At the same time, Dmitry Kozak, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, who represented the Russian Federation at the talks, said that “so far, progress has been practically zero.” the statements are being used as an excuse to deploy more NATO military equipment near Russian borders. According to Moscow, the Russian Federation is moving troops within its territory and at its own discretion, this does not threaten anyone and should not worry anyone. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier, Russia does not create any pretexts for a conflict situation around Ukraine. According to him, Russia does not rule out that the hysteria around Ukraine, hyped by the West, is aimed at covering Kiev's line of sabotaging the Minsk agreements on Donbass. According to the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov, the US and NATO information hysteria over Ukraine is generously framed by lies and fakes. The Russian Federation stated that the United States and the West are hysterically developing the topic of threat and escalation in Ukraine.
