France did not start the war in Ukraine and is an atypical NATO member

By Vistinomer On Feb 19, 2025 0

Photo: Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay

A Facebook post accused France of “starting a war against Russia” by supporting “Ukrainian Nazis,” but the war was actually initiated by Putin, and Macron’s response was to obligingly beg him to stop. France is also criticized for NATO’s expansion towards Russia, yet in 2008, France blocked Ukraine and Georgia from joining the alliance. From 1966 to 2009, France distanced itself from NATO, making decisions that ultimately harmed its interests. According to the post, France will eventually suffer from Trump’s trade war against the EU and will desperately seek Russia’s help. However, Trump didn’t start that war; the plan is to negotiate to stop it

A Facebook post accused France of “starting a war against Russia” by supporting “Ukrainian Nazis,” but the war was actually initiated by Putin, and Macron’s response was to obligingly beg him to stop. France is also criticized for NATO’s expansion towards Russia, yet in 2008, France blocked Ukraine and Georgia from joining the alliance. From 1966 to 2009, France distanced itself from NATO, making decisions that ultimately harmed its interests. According to the post, France will eventually suffer from Trump’s trade war against the EU and will desperately seek Russia’s help. However, Trump didn’t start that war; the plan is to negotiate to stop it

A Facebook post says the following:

Well, well monsieur, you’ll have to lift the sanctions against Russia to survive, but if you want to import your products you’ll have to first publicly apologize to Russia for supporting Ukronazis and the installation of NATO on Russian borders and for waging war in Ukraine in order to kill the Slavs and destroy Russia.

The author of the post, who is pro-Russian, negatively portrays the NATO pact and creates the false impression that France played a key role in its development. However, ironically, France is an atypical member of the pact and has even taken actions that have worked to its detriment.

In 1966, when France was led by Charles de Gaulle, it even distanced itself from NATO, which lasted until 2009. De Gaulle didn’t pull the country out of NATO, but he did weaken its ties with the pact, which led to American bases being expelled from France. France even sought to improve relations with the USSR, which included Russia, a country which De Gaulle greatly respected. As a result, he was welcomed as a hero in Moscow, where on May 9, 2005, a monument to him was unveiled in front of Hotel Cosmos.

France has not always agreed with its Western partners, as exemplified by its disapproval of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2006, however, France rejected NATO’s greater rapprochement with countries outside the Euro-Atlantic region such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea, and in 2019 the NATO membership of Brazil. In 2008, France blocked the entry of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, this undermines the claim in the post that France greatly contributed to the expansion of the pact towards Russia. On some occasions, France did contribute to this, but not always.

Moreover, the presence of NATO on Russia’s borders is nothing new, nor is it a cause for alarm. NATO has been there since its founding in 1949 through Norway, and later other Russian neighbors entered the pact: Poland (1999), the Baltic states (2004), and Finland (2023). These countries, like all of Russia’s neighbors, had negative historical experiences with it, which led them to join NATO. However, the pact didn’t forcefully install bases in them. If NATO had intended to attack Russia, it could have done so from these countries, but it chose not to.

France does not pursue an anti-Slav policy, as the post suggests. There are many Slavic nations, and depending on historical circumstances, France has treated each of them differently.

Napoleon Bonaparte fought against the Russians, but helped the Poles, and France in World War I was with Russia and Serbia against Bulgaria. In 1966 De Gaulle improved relations with Soviet Russia, but in 1968 he condemned it for its invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1995, however, France bombed the forces of Republika Srpska, in favor of Bosnia and Croatia.

It should also be noted that France is now an ally of a few Slavic nations, with whom it is a member of the EU or NATO: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.

Proof that France is not Slavophobic is that no world leader has communicated with Vladimir Putin as much as Emmanuel Macron, for which he has even been criticized as being naive and obliging. Macron has consistently urged Putin for peace in Ukraine, since it was Russia that started the war, not France or Ukraine, contrary to what the post suggests.

Only recently has Macron turned from a “dove” into a “hawk”—as media outlets described him, because Putin cannot be won over. Macron then proposed sending troops to Ukraine, but this did not come to fruition. France did not contribute to the war, which began in the following way.

In February-March 2014, Russia carried out an aggression against Crimea, and then sent agents like Igor Girkin-Strelkov to incite separatism in Donbas as well. Thus, on April 7, 2014, the so-called. “Donetsk People’s Republic” was born, whose Minister of Defense became Strelkov. Ukraine refrained from using force, which changed only after he and his fighters attacked the city of Slavyansk on 12 April 2014, after which Ukraine launched its Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO).

Thus began the War in Donbas, in which the separatists were backed by Russia, whose troops were covertly involved. On February 24, 2022, they launched a full-scale aggression against Ukraine, and Russia was condemned by the world with multiple UN resolutions (examples: here, here and here).

It’s not true that Russia is fighting the Nazis in Ukraine. Ukraine banned Nazism with a law passed on 9 April 2015, and the country is led by a president of Jewish descent, Volodymyr Zelensky. Ironically, the aggression against Ukraine involves Russian neo-Nazis such as Anton Raevsky or Alexey Milchakov with the Rusich Group.

As everywhere, there are some neo-Nazis among the Ukrainians, but they are marginal. They were more active during the chaotic period in 2014, when many Ukrainians self-organized into paramilitary groups. But later, Ukraine came to its senses and put that plan in order, which we have already written about.

Anti-fascism is not Russia’s motive for the fight against Ukraine, but imperialism. Russia has been aggressive towards Ukraine for centuries.

Examples of this are: the Russian abuse of the Pereiaslav Agreement (1654) with Ukraine, which brought it under Russian rule; the Russian burning of the Ukrainian city of Baturyn (1708) and the Zaporizhian Sich (1775); Russian bans on the Ukrainian language such as the Valuev Circular (1863) and the Ems Ukaz (1876); the suppression of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (1918-1922) by Soviet Russia; the Moscow-led Holodomor and Stalinist purges run by Moscow (in the 1930s); etc.

Russia’s current goal is to seize territory, as demonstrated by its illegal annexation of Crimea on March 18, 2014, and other Ukrainian territories on September 30, 2022.

The post also shared a news article, published on a Macedonian website, and its title is:

Emmanuel Macron: If its economic interests are threatened, Europe will have to ensure that others respect it

Donald Trump has declared a trade war against the EU, and Macron has called for it to resist if that happens, which the post ridicules. According to it, France awaits a certain economic collapse, after which it will repentantly seek help from Russia. We’ve already seen examples of France flirting with the Russians, so the prediction in the post seems realistic, but it doesn’t have to be.

The post calls for celebration too quickly, because Trump didn’t even start that trade war. The author of the post cannot know for sure what will happen in the future. We can’t make predictions either, but what we do know is that the EU is planning to negotiate with Trump to win him over, in which it may succeed.

Trump has threatened a trade war with both Mexico and Canada, but he has agreed to delay it since they have met some of his demands. In the end, they may convince him to renounce that war altogether. Not all options are exhausted—as the post suggests, and even if they are, France can handle the problem. It’s a powerful economy, and it also has the support of its EU partners.

Taking all of this into account, we assess the post as untrue.

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