“Radically rational” Putin understands only force – former French President

Vladimir Putin is not crazy but a radically rational person who is hoping that public opinion will get tired of his war against Ukraine and Europeans will fear an escalation to consolidate his gains, former French President François Hollande told POLITICO.

“He is a radically rational person, or a rationally radical person, as you like,” said the former French leader, when asked if Putin could seek to widen the conflict beyond Ukraine. “He’s got his own reasoning and within that framework, he’s ready to use force. He’s only able to understand the [power] dynamic that we’re able to set up against him.”

Reflecting on his time in office when he and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel led attempts to solve Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine in the Normandy Format, which resulted in the “Minsk agreement” peace treaty, Hollande acknowledged that those efforts at dialogue proved fruitless, exposing Putin as a leader who only understands strength.

Further negotiations with Putin are fruitless, Hollande contends: dialogue was possible during a “brief period of uncertainty” following the invasion, but after, “the question [about the utility of dialogue] was unfortunately settled.”

Hollande stopped short of criticizing his successor Emmanuel Macron, who in December 2022 proposed to address Russia’s needs for “security guarantees” in a new European security architecture — a proposal that came under the fierce criticism Ukraine and Eastern European countries.

(c) EuromaidanPress

6 comments

  1. If this coward along with Merkel had shown an ounce of courage against the dwarf bastard, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Him and the fat bitch sold Ukraine down the river and are as guilty as Putin for starting this war.

  2. US conservatives are pushing hard for reduced support to Ukraine. Now it comes in the form of accusations that Zelensky is pushing nuclear war…

    WSJ:

    A few days be­fore Amer­i­ca’s 2022 midterm elec­tions, Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Volodomyr Ze­len­sky ac­cused Rus­sia of fir­ing a rocket into Poland. It was a claim with ex­traordinary im­pli­ca­tions. Poland, a mem­ber of the North At­lantic Treaty Or­ga­ni­za­tion, ben­e­fits from the al­liance’s mu­tual de­fense pact—an at­tack against one is an at­tack against all. The U.S. would plau­si­bly have an oblig­a­tion to re­spond mil­i­tar­ily to a Russ­ian at­tack in­side Poland. In mak­ing the ac­cu­sa­tion, Mr. Ze­len­sky was push­ing on the domi­noes that could start the world’s first war be­tween nu­clear pow­ers.

    The rocket at­tack, it turns out, came not from Vladimir Putin’s Rus­sia but from Ukrain­ian air de­fenses. Even af­ter NATO made that as­sess­ment and ac­knowl­edged that Rus­sia hadn’t fired the rocket, Mr. Ze­len­sky con­tin­ued to deny Ukrain­ian re­spon­si­bil­ity. The story faded from the head­lines, and Mr. Ze­len­sky en­joyed a hero’s wel­come in Wash­ing­ton in De­cem­ber. Amer­i­can tax­payer money has con­tin­ued to flow to Ukraine. A wiser for­eign pol­icy wouldn’t have let such con­duct go un­no­ticed.

    NOTE: This is from a proclamation of support for Trump in 2024 in the belief that he would not ever use US force against Russia.

    • You and this conservative trashing is both intellectual dishonest and naive. Should I assume that democrats and liberals are evil mother fuckers because Bernie sanders favors Putin? Of course not. Only those with a limited intellectual ability would try to demonize an entire group by the voice of a few.

    • So, what’s the point of your post? To try to add one more enemy for Ukraine? Both political parties in the USA have about 5% that support Vladolf. You can choose to highlight one of them or both of them. Guess which option is fair to Ukraine? Dividing people is a Kremlin tactic.

  3. “He is a radically rational person, or a rationally radical person, as you like,”

    When was the last time that France had a decent leader? This dork sure is not one of them. Putler is as rational as he’s a spotless democrat. This is what another jerk-off and useless politician called Schröder once said about putler. Europe really should be more careful what sort of people they vote into office. Yes, so do we!

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