The war in Ukraine, a forgotten election campaign issue?

BIn the last days of the campaign for the European elections, do you remember President Volodymyr Zelensky’s warnings to the National Assembly and President Emmanuel Macron’s announcements to send fighter jets to Ukraine? The earthquake of the dissolution of the National Assembly not only pushed the Ukraine issue into the background, but also led to the French President no longer speaking on the subject, despite his attempts to make it one of the topics of the European elections.

The same observation can be made in the two blocs dominating the debates, the left-wing alliance Nouveau Front Populaire and the right-wing extremist Rassemblement National (RN): the issue of Ukraine – and thus also the relationship with Russia – has been almost forgotten, hidden behind a facade of unanimity or simply swept under the carpet.

The turnaround is most evident on the left, after the dispute over Ukraine, which was a major divisive issue throughout the European election campaign. Raphaël Glucksmann, supported by the Socialists and who received the most votes on the left (13.8%), constantly referred to the positions of the party La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon: a more or less admitted support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, attacks on NATO, which was blamed for the war in Ukraine, the denigration of dead or alive Russian opposition figures and the repetition of Russian theses about “neo-Nazis” having influence over the power in Kiev. The accusations are well known and have been around for a long time.

On the other hand, LFI and RN tried to cast doubt on Glucksmann’s involvement by portraying his past collaboration with former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now imprisoned by a pro-Russian authoritarian government, as a problematic episode. Glucksmann was also portrayed as a “warmonger”.

“We had to argue about many words”

These divides were bridged in record time with the drafting of the joint political program of the Nouveau Front Populaire, which joins the positions of the Socialists and the Greens on Ukraine. The aim and means are clearly defined: “To defeat Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression and to hold him accountable for his crimes before an international court: the sovereignty and freedom of the Ukrainian people, as well as the integrity of its borders, must be tirelessly defended by supplying the necessary weapons, canceling the foreign debt and confiscating the assets of the oligarchs who contribute to the Russian war effort.”

“It was not easy, we had to fight for a lot of words,” said MEP Aurore Lalucq, who led the negotiations for Glucksman’s small party Place Publique. “The issue was one of the essential elements for us and required clarification. It is not trivial, not just a line in the program. It is about what is at the core of the ideological program and the identity of the various parties.” In other words, it is not just about Mélenchon’s geopolitical positioning, but also about his democratic convictions.

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