Risk of war highest since 1945, French prime minister warns
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In France, president Emmanuel Macron on Thursday is due to meet with party leaders , to discuss “the existential threat” posed by Russia.
This comes on the back of two meetings with European leaders this week and ahead of his trip to Washington DC to meet with Trump, which the US president said could come early next week.
In a late night social media post, Macron said that “France and its partners have a clear and united position. We seek a long-lasting and solid peace in Ukraine.”
“We are convinced of the need to increase our defence and security spending and capabilities for Europe and each of our countries. Decisions will be made in the coming days and weeks,” he said.
If you were in any doubt as to the seriousness of the situation, French prime minister François Bayrou was quoted on Thursday by the French media as saying that “the risk of war has never been so high since 1945.” “We are in a context reminiscent of the 1930s. Icebergs are approaching us, and the Paris meeting at the Élysée Palace failed to stop them,” the prime minister said, referring to the emergency summit of European leaders convened by President Emmanuel Macron to address security issues on the continent.
Meanwhile, completely undeterred by public pushback from multiple European leaders, US president Donald Trump repeated his attack on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy overnight, telling the audience at a Saudi-backed event in Miami that he is a “dictator without elections.”
He also repeated his false claims about the US spending on Ukraine, and warned Zelenskyy “he better move fast or he is not going to have a country left; gotta move, gotta move fast.”
Separately, Trump also attacked Zelenskyy for treating US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “rather rudely,” because the Ukrainians “wouldn’t sign the document” confirming his proposed minerals deal. (Zelenskyy said he wasn’t prepared to “sell [Ukraine] away.”)
“They are no longer dealing with the same United States as they were dealing a few months ago,” Trump said.
“If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said.
