PARIS (AP) — France’s prime minister on Monday tore into U.S. President Donald Trump’s Oval Office thrashing of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling it a staggering present of “brutality” that aimed to humiliate Ukraine’s chief and bend him to the need 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 clash at the White House on Friday and dropped the diplomatic niceties that usually mark French-U.S. relations.
“On Friday evening, within the Oval Workplace of the White Home, a staggering scene unfurled earlier than the lenses of the whole world, marked by brutality, a want to humiliate, with the purpose of creating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fold by means of threats, in order that he offers in to the calls for of his aggressors,” Bayrou stated.
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“All this was summed up in a single phrase earlier than the planet’s cameras: ‘Both you discover a take care of Putin or we are going to abandon you,’” Bayrou stated, apparently referring to Trump’s comments within the Oval Workplace. Trump’s precise phrases to Zelenskyy had been “you’re both going to make a deal or we’re out.”
Persevering with his speech to France’s parliament, Bayrou added: “For the glory of democratic accountability, for the glory of Ukraine and, I dare say, for the glory of Europe, President Zelenskyy didn’t fold and I believe we will present him our appreciation.”
Lawmakers received to their ft 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 scenario that in our eyes is essentially the most critical, essentially the most destabilized, essentially the most harmful of all those who our nation and our continent have skilled for the reason that finish of World Warfare II.”
The French prime minister stated that the Oval Office scene — the place Zelenskyy was berated each by Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance earlier than being asked to leave the White House — 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 one other elementary alliance: the one which the US had with themselves, their historical past, and with a sure ideally suited of defending the legislation, of defending the weak in opposition to the forces of tyranny.”
Bayrou has been Macron’s prime minister since December. Though Bayrou would not communicate immediately for the presidency, the veteran French politician has lengthy been an important associate for Macron. In opening his deal with to parliament, Bayrou stated that he was talking for Macron’s authorities.
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John Leicester reported from Le Pecq.
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