French delegation insight: In Moscow, Macron found a different, tougher Putin – EURACTIV.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin spent much of his marathon talks with France’s Emmanuel Macron this week on the Ukraine crisis reciting grievances that date back to the end of the Cold War, two sources in the French leader’s entourage said.

In the first detailed read-out on Monday’s meeting (7 February) in Moscow from the French delegation, the sources said Macron had been struck by how different Putin was to the man he had met in his summer residence on the French Riviera three years ago.

“(Putin) gave him five hours of historical revisionism,” said one of the two sources, describing how the Kremlin leader laid out his belief that the West had broken commitments to Russia since 1997 with the enlargement of NATO to include former Soviet bloc states.

“So he goes on for hours rewriting history from 1997 on. He drowns you in these long monologues. And the president (Macron) kept on going back to the issues of the day,” said the source.