![]() By meeting Ukraine’s outgoing and incoming presidents, moving to coopt the latter, setting a negotiating agenda on Donbas (see below), and hosting the summit in France, Macron is preparing a grand entrance for himself into the Normandy process.Īccording to the official readout from Elysée, “One aim of these meetings is to obtain reassurances of Ukraine’s willingness to make efforts toward a settlement of the conflict in Donbas… President Macron insists that all the parties take urgent and specific steps to restore the climate of confidence necessary to the success of the negotiations” (, April 12). Macron received Zelensky first and Poroshenko second, giving the incumbent head of state one hour and no media opportunity (Poroshenko spoke to Ukrainian media later). At the same time they disagreed with each other in front of the media over the Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline project, and Poroshenko concluded that “we shall continue fighting to stop this project” (, April 12).įor its part, the Elysée Palace seemed to treat Poroshenko icily. Poroshenko, in turn, paid tribute to Merkel’s role in upholding economic sanctions on Russia. This almost uniformly positive assessment (reflecting a farewell’s courtesy to some degree) led Macron’s circle to suspect that Merkel still hoped for Poroshenko to be reelected, even as Macron and Zelensky were reaching out to each other (Le Monde, April 13). She praised the Ukrainian government’s commitment to the transition to a market economy while acknowledging the social costs involved and she complimented Ukraine on its free and fair elections (, April 12). The joint news conference in Berlin witnessed Merkel at her most gracious in crediting Ukraine-and implicitly its president-for the reforms achieved and those still in progress. But he attached (as he has done throughout his presidential term) Ukraine’s own conditions: in this case, they include “preserving the unitary state structure of Ukraine” (i.e., no “special status” for the Donetsk-Luhansk territory) and discussing a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ukraine’s east as a priority item on the Normandy summit’s agenda (Ukrinform, Ukraiyna TV, April 12– 14). In his readouts of the Berlin meeting for Ukrainian media, Poroshenko announced that he would be the one-as the reelected president-to initiate a summit-level Normandy meeting. He used both visits as electoral campaign events for playback at home. And they would like Kyiv to be the first to come out publicly with this initiative, following the presidential election runoff.įor his part, Poroshenko embarked on these visits not as an all-but-defeated president, but as an active contender for reelection. They also laid markers for his putative successor Zelensky in the upcoming negotiations with Russia on “implementing the Minsk armistice.” Merkel and Macron propose urgently to resurrect the Normandy format (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine) at the level of heads of state and governments, after more than two years of inactivity. ![]() Merkel’s and Macron’s meetings with Poroshenko amounted to farewells to him as president. Moreover, Macron received Zelensky in Paris, also on April 12, separately from Poroshenko. With challenger Volodymyr Zelensky far ahead in the opinion polls, both Berlin and Paris are already planning for a post-Poroshenko Ukraine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron each conferred with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Berlin and Paris, respectively, on the same day, April 12, between the two rounds of Ukraine’s presidential election.
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