“This is our war”: Why France has become tough on Russia

As reported by European Pravda, French President Emmanuel Macron is not backing down from the idea of sending French (and not only) troops to Ukraine. This plan has a vulnerability, which is the lack of unequivocal support from French society. And it's not surprising.

Do the French really oppose it so much? Can this change? And how do average French people generally feel about Ukraine?

Sergiy Sydorenko, European Pravda's editor, has talked to French political sociologist, the University of Paris Nanterre associate professor, Anna Colin Lebedev. Read more in the article - France is pro-Ukrainian, but cultural genocide is not an argument for the French. France's attitude towards Ukraine is currently changing. The main change occurred in 2022 when the French realised that Ukraine existed.

They began to take interest and form their new attitude towards both Ukraine and Russia. The public was very clear: journalists who knew nothing about Ukraine before 2022 turned to experts, trying to understand it. The mass arrival of Ukrainian refugees became very important.

French people started talking to them, saw who they were, listened to Ukrainian music, etc. This played a very important role in forming an impression of Ukrainians, not just terrible news about bombings, war photos, etc. Two years ago, the French felt that Russian society betrayed their expectations.

Of course, before 2022, France had known about the authoritarian regime in Russia, about repression, etc. But the average French perceived Russia also as a center of culture, civilisation. And they saw what the Russians were doing in Ukraine.

That former image of Russia doesn't not exist in French society any longer. The main transformation has not occurred in society, but in the French government over the past months. Macron has decided to be tougher on Russia.

This change though has not yet received sufficient support from ordinary French people. On the contrary, it frightened many in France. Macron's initiative to eventually send French troops to Ukraine was perceived very ambiguously.

But it does not mean that France will not agree to send a contingent to Ukraine. Support for this idea is higher among French politicians than in society. The entire center of the political spectrum, as well as classical left and right, generally support this idea and are already consulting with the military, as well as sociologists, political scientists.

We also receive questions about Macron's initiative. And we explain, among other things, that for Russia, the main enemy is not Ukraine, but the collective West, including France as part of the West. Moreover, this Russia's narrative about France as an enemy is repeated over and over.

This is already our war. But there is also a problem that not all of Kyiv's arguments work in France. For example, when Ukraine talks about cultural genocide - this is not an argument for the French.

France was also an empire, a colonial center. But despite all this background, now France, French society is pro-Ukrainian. It's just that different arguments work here.

And although the French, in the vast majority, do not yet realise that this is also their war, they already understand that this war is not very far and that it is approaching France.

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