PARIS (AP) — France’s prime minister on Monday tore into U.S. President Donald Trump’s Oval Workplace thrashing of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling it a staggering present of “brutality” that aimed to humiliate Ukraine’s chief and bend him to the desire of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The terribly frank criticism from Prime Minister François Bayrou, talking in a parliamentary debate on Ukraine, diverged from the extra nuanced tone that French President Emmanuel Macron has adopted within the wake of the conflict on the White Home on Friday and dropped the diplomatic niceties that typically mark French-U.S. relations.
“On Friday night, in the Oval Office of the White House, a staggering scene unfurled before the lenses of the entire world, marked by brutality, a desire to humiliate, with the goal of making Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fold through threats, so that he gives in to the demands of his aggressors,” Bayrou stated.
“All this was summed up in one phrase before the planet’s cameras: ‘Either you find a deal with Putin or we will abandon you,’” Bayrou stated, apparently referring to Trump’s feedback within the Oval Workplace. Trump’s precise phrases to Zelenskyy have been “you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.”
Persevering with his speech to France’s parliament, Bayrou added: “For the honor of democratic responsibility, for the honor of Ukraine and, I dare say, for the honor of Europe, President Zelenskyy did not fold and I think we can show him our appreciation.”
Lawmakers bought to their toes within the Nationwide Meeting chamber to applaud.
Bayrou’s grim outlook for Europe
In opening the parliamentary debate, Bayrou stated that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its diplomatic fallout have left Europe in grave peril. He spoke of “an historic situation that in our eyes is the most serious, the most destabilized, the most dangerous of all those that our country and our continent have experienced since the end of World War II.”
The French prime minister stated that the Oval Workplace scene — the place Zelenskyy was berated each by Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance earlier than being requested to depart the White Home — left “two victims.”
The primary, Bayrou stated, was Ukraine’s safety.
The second was each the trans-Atlantic relationship with conventional American allies and Washington’s picture, he stated. Bayrou stated that the Oval Workplace scene “compromised another fundamental alliance: the one that the United States had with themselves, their history, and with a certain ideal of defending the law, of defending the weak against the forces of tyranny.”
Bayrou has been Macron’s prime minister since December. Though Bayrou doesn’t communicate instantly for the presidency, the veteran French politician has lengthy been a vital associate for Macron. In opening his tackle to parliament, Bayrou stated that he was talking for Macron’s authorities.
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John Leicester reported from Le Pecq.
