Macron Says Coronavirus Caused Putin the Invade the Ukraine

This Macron fellow is a strange bird.

RT:

Russian foreign policy regarding Ukraine is dictated by the whims of President Vladimir Putin rather than rational thinking, his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, has claimed.

Macron speculated about Putin’s mindset and the reasons he ordered Russian troops to enter Ukraine in late February, during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday.

“I have no rational explanation. I think this is a series of resentment, this is a strategy of hegemony in the region, and I would say this is a post-Covid-19 consequence, isolation,” he said.

The French leader argued that when Putin “decided to launch his war on 21 February, I think he made the first mistake, a huge one. And he decided to put Russia in a situation indeed to be the new imperial country and to launch a colonial war.”

In the CNN interview, Macron claimed that “now it’s clear for everybody that the leader who decided to go to war, the leader who decided to escalate, is President Putin.”

Tapper asked about the positions of countries such as China, which acknowledge Moscow’s rationale for countering NATO expansion, while refusing to join the US-led effort to arm Ukraine and punish Russia with economic sanctions. Macron declined to condemn them.

“I think we have to avoid lecturing people and saying we are on the good side of history. I think, if we have a lot of respect, we try to understand where they stand, what they do believe in, and what their feelings are, we can convince them,” he said.

Bro, you know the reasoning. Everyone knows the reasoning.

It’s not complicated.

Zelensky was saying he was going to join NATO, and was saying aloud that he wants NATO nukes on Russia’s border. He said this, in very straightforward language, to the Munich Security Council.

Here’s the speech:

He said:

I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.

Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third nuclear capability. We don’t have that weapon. We also have no security. We also do not have part of the territory of our state that is larger in area than Switzerland, the Netherlands or Belgium. And most importantly – we don’t have millions of our citizens. We don’t have all this.

Therefore, we have something. The right to demand a shift from a policy of appeasement to ensuring security and peace guarantees.

Putin said that was a red line, gave Zelensky time to backtrack, and he didn’t. So Putin felt there was no choice but to use the military.

You can disagree with that, but you can’t argue it is insane or otherwise out of the order of normal thought. It is “rational.” If you want to respond, then explain why NATO is not a threat to Russia – explain why Russia would be comfortable with the Ukraine joining NATO and putting nukes on her border. That’s what you would have to do.