The top French diplomat on Thursday met with senior US officials and lawmakers in Washington to discuss the importance of maintaining pressure on Russia, including with additional sanctions, as well as the need to support Ukraine with security guarantees, Kyiv Post’s Washington correspondent reports.
“I’ve heard President [Donald] Trump, but also other officials from the US, clearly say that they want this peace to be lasting. And of course, this means that there is a security guarantee for Ukraine,” Jean-Noel Barrot told an audience at the Atlantic Council wrapping his first trip to Washington as the French Foreign Minister.
According to him, the US and EU share “the same view” with regard to ensuring the outcome of the war, including Ukraine’s long-term security, because the alternative is replacing rule-based international order with the law of the strongest, as he put it.
Should Ukraine capitulate after it had agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees, “this will send a signal that the only ultimate security guarantee is the possession of nuclear weapons,” the French diplomat explained, adding “and there, you have a nuclear proliferation crisis which raises global instability at levels that we haven’t seen for the past eighty years, and will increase the cost massively of security in the US, security in Europe.”
Barrot went on to highlight that the US “understands” European perspective on the current crisis: “…Which is that our own security is at stake because we are neighbors of Russia, or because we don’t want to be neighbors of this Russia that is now spending 40 percent of its budget on its military spending, 10 percent of its GDP, that just conscribed 160,000 additional soldiers, the largest conscription in fourteen years.”
He then added, “I’ve heard many, many times Russia say that they don’t want NATO at their borders. Well, we don’t want this Russia at our borders either. And that’s why we are so serious about what’s happening, about how the war will end. And that’s why we’ve been insisting so much about the security guarantees. And I think our message went through.”
Washington, Barrot said, is counting on Europe to build the security arrangements, such that, as he explained it, “When the peace deal is struck that we can provide those security arrangements in order for the peace to be lasting and durable.”
“When the moment is ripe, we’ll get to the Americans and ask them, or tell them, what is it we need for this security guarantee to be and we’re working on this, and we’re confident,” he later emphasized. “I’ve heard President Trump on several occasions speak in a way that shows that he understands the importance of the security guarantees,” he said.
Barrot on Thursday met with his American counterpart Marco Rubio at the State Department “to advance the path to peace in Ukraine,” Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
“The secretary made clear that President Trump is focused on halting the senseless bloodshed in Ukraine and affirmed a US commitment to working closely with France and other European partners to secure a lasting peace,” she added.
For Barrot, “this is a decisive moment for Europe.” As the US will likely reduce its commitment within NATO, it is counting on Europe to bear the burden of providing the security arrangements.
“But we also need to be honest with them, once we’ve done our homework, if there are pieces of these security arrangements that cannot be replaced – you know, that can be – cannot be found outside of, you know, US contribution. We’ll just be honest,” he said in a speech after the meeting with Rubio.
As for Washington’s peace efforts, the top French diplomat reminded that Ukraine “has done its part” by accepting the Trump administration’s proposal on a comprehensive ceasefire, and signing a minerals deal with the US. “They’ve walked their part of the talk.”
In the meantime, he said, “we haven’t seen Vladimir Putin send any signal, any sign of its willingness to comply with the requests of President Trump. To the very contrary.”
“So let’s face it: Right now the main obstacle to peace is Vladimir Putin,” Barrot said.
While in Washington, Barrot also met with several leading legislators, including Senator Lindsey Graham, the author of a bipartisan package of sanctions aimed at threatening Russia into accepting a ceasefire.
“And here again, we agreed that we would try to coordinate because we, Europeans, are in the process of putting together a seventeenth sanction package that we are going to try on substance and timing to coordinate with Senator Graham’s own package,” Barrot concluded.