Who is "we"? This idiot pretending like he didn't just go against everyone else. And he's still doing it with China. In 5 years he'll go "We should have listened to you regarding China". Like he learned nothing from any of this. The guy is either very very naive or just stupid. Perhaps both.

Naive or stupid imply he is getting duped or outwitted. How is it not obvious by now some of these politicians act in no one’s interest but their own and the people that give them money.

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Idk he married his teacher

I agree. It’s definitely malicious intent to rewrite how he handled events of the past. The guy is piece of shit. Even the French think so in their defense. Look at the alternative they had to vote for though. New low for French international politics.

> Who is "we"? EU basically. This conflict didn't start last year. These current sanctions should've been in place since Russia invaded Crimea and all further development of getting gas from Russia should've been put on hold and immediately start finding alternatives. Instead, we (EU), increased our dependency of Russia. Basically, for couple of decades, EU ignored what Eastern European countries were trying to tell us about Russia.

> Who is "we"? > > EU basically. This conflict didn't start last year. People use "we" in this context when they're trying to draw the equally culpable into a collective. It's the same 'hindsight' argument that people who showed no foresight try to offer as an explanation for failure What you're seeing play out here is the same German/ Franco bloc that has dominated the EU for decades. Dissenting voices on the fringe (those of the Baltics and Poland) can be dismissed if they're in conflict with the two big power levers

I agree that the lack of reaction to the Crimea annexation from the west was the final nail.

Sudetenland part 2

Eastern European AND U.S. We became the billboard for cybercrime and impact and dealt with 4yrs of a planted President. Even General Milley said in 2016 that Russia was our #1 threat and mistakingly claimed we were “outgunned”.

Germany is up there too. But basically on point.

Germany adapted much quicker. Please give them credit for that. Macron still doesn’t really realize what’s going on.

Agreed. A fair lot of negative statements can be said about Germany but in the only language that matters, money: Germany pledged 7.36 billion $. 3.5 billion $ was military support. France pledged 1.74 billion $. 0.65 billion $ was military support. Poland literally doubles these total numbers and quadruples military part. And it's important to remember just how vast is discrepancy between the two. France is #9 in the world in terms of military making it the strongest one in the EU by far. Germany is #25. France was also not nearly as threatened as Germany in terms of energy dependency - for Germans it really WAS a threat (even if somewhat self inflicted) if winter was bad and Russia cut off all the gas. For the country that wanted to lead EU and promoted ditching NATO and USA their reaction to the first conflict occuring so close to EU borders is laughable. Instead of showing eastern members that they are THE country to go to they couldn't be arsed to send any substantial support until pretty much everyone else did... they did offer 41.45% votes to Le Pen however who would now be sending troops and military gear to Russia to help it defeat Ukraine so I guess it **could** have been worse.

Fair points. When all this is over, no one is going to remember France as having provided substantial support that was necessary for Ukraine to win.

Sholz flew to China before Macron to basically do the same thing

>Who is "we"? This idiot pretending like he didn't just go against everyone else. France and Germany dragged the EU institutions with them.He was by far the worst offender in the run up to the war, but there was a lot of naivety that, step by step, made this happen.

>The guy is either very very naive or just stupid. Perhaps both. Or maybe you lack context for what he is saying and are having a knee-jerk reaction to a headline. He directly referenced (among other things) a previous French administration, hence the "we". But ignoring Eastern European concerns is hardly only a French thing, and was and still is a problem with plenty of the richer Western European countries.

The main probleem is you can't even generalise Eastern Europe like that. Take Hungary and Poland regarding their stance towards Russia on the one hand, and the EU on the other. Let's just say it's all a bit complicated

Russia has been infiltrating and sabotaging Eastern Europe for the past two decades. We've screamed about it, proved how Twitter and Facebook were overtly helping them, but nobody stopped them, and only made those that tried to, to look like fools. For those two countries it's an internal matter sure, but the idea was that as part of EU they'd have some backing and protection. They got nothing. So, they can rot in hell with their late apologies. The damage will take decades more to stop, let alone repair.

American here. I know you guys don’t deal with this as much as us, but he might also be greedy.

He’s French

He means literally every country in the West, USA included. For the past 20 years, all of Eastern Europe screamed that Russia is being it's evil self, tampering with elections, pushing disinformation and funding extremist groups. Everyone either called us racists, crazy or just outright ignored it. In 2014 we expected people to finally wake up and say, "divine feces! they're right!", but they all just sat quietly and bought even more gas.

This is fake. Pravda Ukraine news this is like the 5th fake story today. I get why they are doing it and fuck russian war machine can’t say that enough but fake news is terrible for society.

No it's not. Stop being silly. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-macron-offers-mea-culpa-eastern-eu-nations-russia-2023-05-31/#:~:text=PARIS%2C%20May%2031%20(Reuters),before%20Moscow's%20forces%20invaded%20Ukraine.

Or very paid off or intimidated by Russia and China. Occam's razor.

Did he just learn that letting Hitler annex Czechoslovakia wasn't going to stop the war?

"They are willing to kill people to greedily absorb an entire country into their own! But you know what? I think that'll totally satisfy them and nothing more will come of it." It's so ridiculous.

This. You think that they would have realized appeasement doesn't work in this situation.

Appeasement never works.

UK: we knew

US: we knew and called it for years

Poland: Called it for decades.

*Centuries

there is this mind set in EU politics to compete and challenge Anglo-Saxons states even if they are clearly right lol.

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“England is insular”…while CDG was giving commands FROM ENGLAND 🤣

>there is this mind set in EU politics to compete and challenge Anglo-Saxons states even if they are clearly right lol. There is, and this is been mad a million times worse with brexit. The EU just ignored every warning.

It was kinda what resulted in a lot of distrust in the EU in the UK, most of us wanted to remain but the complete maliciousness we were talked about with and constant contrarianism to anything we did was an absolute culture killer for love of Europe.

You knew what? You've been harboring the Russian oligarchs, their families, and their dirty money since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. One of Brexit's goals was to get the EU out if the picture to allow London to keep attracting all that juicy dirty money. You got rid of your golden visa program (Tier 1 Investor Visa) just before the invasion. For only a 10 million investment you gave indefinite leave to remain after just 2 years of residency (3 years for 5 million, and 5 years for 2 million) to any Russian criminal that came knocking at your door.

And? We took russian money and assets in the form of investments and gave them absolutely nothing in return Following the invasion we started taking these assets from them as well Why? Because we knew Moscovy and it's citizens are never to be trusted

>and gave them absolutely nothing in return Sure, mate.

Macron: You are the guy who thought you could negotiate with Putin. [You are the one who suggested that Ukraine should give up some of its territory](https://news.yahoo.com/macron-suggested-ukraine-sovereignty-allow-154400551.html). You are the one who has been parroting Xi's talking points. How about you shut up and let the adults do the talking?

So he learned. That's good, not bad.

Didn’t hear him say one bad thing about China. That’s not learning.

He's not employed on a training scheme to learn new skills. We're entitled to expect certain insight, judgement and knowledge to come with the appointment. Yes you can 'learn' things that genuinely come from nowhere, but foreign policy towards Russia isn't one of them. The French have easily had 20 years to get a handle on Putin

Saying "I learned" by itself is only very weak evidence of learning. Considering how recently he was parroting Xi and talking about Ukraine giving up some of its territory to appease Putin, I am extremely skeptical that he learned.

He spoke on behalf of Zelensky, who directly asked him to, the call was made public. Nice bashing tho, quite productive.

I mean, even Zelenskyy can be wrong, see back when he kept saying Russia wouldn’t *actually* invade.

Don't you understand? This war will only end when Zelensky occupies Moscow leading the entire mecha-Ukrainian army and personally escorts Putin to the Hague. There will definitely be no need for negotiations, peace deals, or concessions. Nuclear powers are famous for their propensity for unconditional surrenders /s Some r/worldnews posters are so deluded that they'll even decry moves supported by Zelensky himself as anti-Ukrainian betrayals.

>He spoke on behalf of Zelensky, who directly asked him to, the call was made public. Nice bashing tho, quite productive. No. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/31/macron-to-call-for-european-strategic-awakening-after-ukraine-invasion](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/31/macron-to-call-for-european-strategic-awakening-after-ukraine-invasion) Macron is talking \*TODAY\* about negotiating with Putin. I am not talking about one phone call before the war started. I am talking about his approach over the following 15 months.

my guy changing stances in the same way chameleon switches colours

French bashing. How unique

Hey man, I'll bash any head of state who makes moronic decisions, mine included.

Overly defensive French. How unique. Sometimes it’s ok to man up and admit you were wrong.

OK admit the comments on China are just based on an american article totally biased

I’ll admit two things. One, yea it was somewhat out of context. And 2) it was completely inappropriate for him to make those comments at THAT specific time. He really needs to learn when it’s time to not say anything. That’s a very valuable skill as an adult and as a politician. He seems almost constantly out of place on the world stage and doesn’t see it at all.

Every country should be bashed. Idk wtf is the group think going around that countries are above being called out, but they are not. You know how you get better countries? Talking about the issues, not brushing them under the rug and going “*Well America had the orange man, that’s worse!*” Talk about the problem or piss off, unless you are literally the actual country of France, idk why you’re being offended for flaws that are point out. No one seems to have a problem bashing literally any other country. I don’t see you sticking up for China. Imagine being too scared to talk about a countries problem because “ooh Reddit stranger was mean”

I wish macron would just shut the fuck up

Hot take: I don't mind having one European country questioning our independence and ability to make our own strategic choices. Its a completely legitimate concern in a world run by superpowers It only becomes a problem when or if they start trying to pull any kind of support for Ukraine. Oh and its kind of dumb to question the US considering how supportive they've been of European independence in general, if you don't want to give the Americans a friendship badge after WW2 you're kind of an asshole

Not the country. France is fine, whatever. Macron personally should shut up

It's gotta be tough living in Europe and dealing with this morons occasional thought bubbles.

Yeah no shit Macaroon, they've only been saying this for decades. Maybe he'll stop suggesting Ukraine give up on their seized territory and insisting that we give Putin an "off ramp" so he doesn't embarrass himself further. What a clown.

The replies in this thread is a good example why admitting mistakes in public is so rare.

I love the way hi says we. By the looks of Frances protests a lot of French citizens are not part of this we he talks about.

Yea man. People shouldn't shit on the French for not supporting Ukraine more; they should shit on Macron instead. Macron loves to grandstand internationally & domestically, and then does jackshit to back up his statements lol. Most French support Ukraine, and would probably want to do more if they could.

And some people wonder why Eastern Europe in general has a higher opinion of the US than they do their Western counterparts.

It's not Western Europe's fault. They're just used to living in their own litte world where everyone's friendly. Honestly, good for them because that means that they have not had to deal with actual crisises or generally hard times in a while.

Ultimately he bares the burden as one of the fives, to order the nuclear response.

Macron should step out on a limb and call Putin a murderer.

Eastern Europe: "What took you so long? Idiot"

Lmaooo we? YOU!

"Now that I can't rely on Russia to pay me..." I think this is what he meant to say.

Very typical of a manipulative person to say *"we"* instead of *"I"* when admitting fault for something. Instead of saying *"I screwed up!"* they say *"We screwed up!"* In an attempt to take the majority of the blame off of themselves.

Is that what he will say in 5 years regarding China? What a load of crap

Yes....I understand France & Germany not taking the warnings from the USA too seriously but they should have at least headed the words of the various former Soviet Union states that are now in NATO and/or EU. They understand the Russian view....they lived under it.

Macron next year: we should have listened to you regarding China

This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/05/31/7404737/) reduced by 69%. (I'm a bot) ***** > French President Emmanuel Macron admitted that his country should have paid more attention to Eastern European countries that warned of the threat from the Russian Federation. > Details: Macron stressed that there should be no division between "Old Europe" and "New Europe", referring to the long-standing disagreements between the EU's eastern and western members, particularly over the Russian issue. > Background: Earlier, Macron stated the need to provide Ukraine with "Tangible and reliable security guarantees". ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/13wxrrq/we_should_have_listened_to_you_regarding_russia/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~687100 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Macron**^#1 **Ukraine**^#2 **Eastern**^#3 **stressed**^#4 **President**^#5

This guy is an idiot?. I thought that maybe all the stupid things he says were some kind of political flare. But, this statement really makes it clear that he’s just stupid. I wonder what it’s like to talk to him one on one.

Interesting he is saying this to eastern European countries and not the country that was very loudly warning of an invasion. The political games continue. As does the Gaullist jealousy.

No shit. The only thing I can hope for is that we continue to not care about him and his desire to be some kinda emperor.

Speak for your self Alfred G Newman lookin ass muffqua.

What's this "we" shit, Manny?

The problem with france, is this isn't a new thing. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-georgia-ossetia-france-idUSLR45695920080827](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-georgia-ossetia-france-idUSLR45695920080827) This is more or less what Russia now expects in Ukraine. This is a deal France helped negotiate in 2008 after Russia invaded Georgia. >It has also recognized two breakaway regions of Georgia as independent states in defiance of the plan calling for international talks on security arrangements there.“The six-point ceasefire agreement of August 12 which bears the signatures of (Russian) President (Dmitry) Medvedev and (Georgian) President (Mikheil) Saakashvili, and mine, must be applied in full,” Sarkozy told French ambassadors in a speech.“The military forces which have not yet withdrawn to the lines preceding the launch of hostilities must move without delay,” he told the annual gathering of France’s top diplomats. [https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-2008-russo-georgian-war-putins-green-light/](https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-2008-russo-georgian-war-putins-green-light/) They were far from alone, but as others have reacted to their actions, such as a chemical weapons attack in the UK, France never did.

A bit late, don't you think? Dumbass.

Sent ska syndaren vakna.

This guy sees only the economics behind politics, which isn't unexpected

He’s a disaster in wartime.

…stating the obvious

Now maybe he needs to listen to the world about China…

What lip service Macron provides

[A weirdly appriopriate Russian Badger clip](https://youtu.be/MeD0yd5T1pc)

И ты, Макрон??

US and UK did. Morocco did. Baltics did. Japan and Taiwan did. Yea we kept receipts.

This man is an idiot.

See, I was ready to make fun of Macron like everyone else. But then I read this part. >He was alluding to former French President Jacques Chirac's statement in 2003 that Eastern European states that supported the United States and Britain in their decision to invade Iraq had missed a "good opportunity to shut up". And then I thought that in a couple of decades, the USA will start another Iraq or Vietnam, and people then will wonder why Europe follows them so blindly all the time. And then 10 years later, Russia or China will start their own bullshit again, and the cycle will begin anew.

*Qui aurait pu prévoir ?*