Just a few days before the first round of early elections in France on Sunday to elect the 577 members of the National Assembly, French television organized a debate in which the three main candidates faced off.
The Prime Minister saw each other’s faces Gabriel Attalof the ruling party Renaissancethe extreme right of National Groupcon Jordan Bardellay Olivier Faure as representative of the left coalition New Popular Front.
They debated about purchasing power, homophobia, internal securitybut it was the war in Ukraine the one who dominated.
Bardella assured that he would not allow “the russian imperialism absorb an allied state like Ukraine“.
He ruled out the possibility of sending French troops to fight on the battlefield: “My position on this conflict is very simple. I have defended him throughout this European campaign. It’s about supporting Ukraine and avoid escalation with Russia, which is, I remind you, a nuclear power. Therefore, if I am Prime Minister tomorrow, there will be no French soldiers deployed on Ukrainian soil.”
A flat rebuttal to the president’s comments Emmanuel Macron in May in which he said that had not ruled out sending French troops to Ukraine.
The representative of the left coalition, Olivier Faurealso criticized Macron’s comments saying that not even Ukrainians expected French troops to fight alongside them: “There are red lines. The sending of ground troops is not at all sought, neither by Zelensky nor by the Ukrainians. Therefore, it is absolutely useless. And when the President of the Republic proposed it, he simply managed to divide the Europeans.”
Faure insisted that the coalition New Popular Front is against the deployment of French troops, but is not opposed to sending long range missiles to Ukraine.
Macron’s position was defended by his prime minister Gabriel Attal: “When we fight for Ukraine, we fight to defend our values, we fight to defend its freedom, but we also fight for our daily lives. What the President of the Republic did was simply remember that, faced with a Vladimir Putin what does not establish red lines, if we start by setting red lines for ourselves, we would be doing Ukraine a disservice. That’s all she did.”
The early legislative elections were summoned by Emmanuel Macron June 9the night your party Renaissance lost widely to the extreme right National Group in the EU elections.
The first round takes place this Sunday and the second on July 7.
Additional sources • Enrique Barrueco (Voice-over)
