French ministers visit Moscow to reset ties

Bloomberg

France’s foreign and defense ministers will meet their Russian counterparts on Monday in Moscow, a further step in President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to refresh relations with Russia.
It’s the first such visit since 2014, and follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Macron’s summer residence, just before the Biarritz G-7 meeting.
“We’re not going to Moscow to lift the sanctions,” French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in an interview with CNews television and Europe 1 radio. He said there needs to be progress towards “stabilisation in Ukraine, then sanctions could progressively be revised, but we’re not there.”
Annual meetings between French and Russian defense and foreign ministers began in 2002 but were suspended after Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, leading to rounds of sanctions from the European Union.
Macron has criticised Russia’s cyber-meddling in other country’s elections and its crackdown on domestic opposition, but at the same time he and his aides have argued that working with Russia is essential to solving a slew of foreign policy crises from Syria to Libya to Iran.
“Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic error because it would isolate Russia and only increase international tensions,” Macron said in a speech to France’s ambassadors, where he claimed a “deep state” within the foreign ministry was hampering his outreach to Moscow.
“At the same time, we can’t be weak with Russia and forget all the past disagreements, the past conflicts. We must deeply rethink this structure.”
The London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs said in report that “there is no world leader with a more contradictory attitude toward Russia than Emmanuel Macron.”
The French ministers’ trip comes days after Russia and Ukraine agreed on an exchange of prisoners that Le Drian
said showed “the willingness to renew dialogue” between the bitter adversaries.