France’s Prime Minister on Monday (March 3, 2025) tore into U.S. President Donald Trump’s Oval Office thrashing of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling it a staggering show 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 conflict on the White House on Friday (February 28, 2025) and dropped the diplomatic niceties that usually 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,” Mr. Bayrou stated.
“All this was summed up in one phrase before the planet’s cameras: ‘Either you find a deal with Mr. Putin or we will abandon you,’” Mr. Bayrou stated, apparently referring to Mr. Trump’s feedback within the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s precise phrases to Mr. Zelenskyy had been “you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.”
Continuing his speech to France’s Parliament, Mr. 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 got to their feet in the National Assembly chamber to applaud.
In opening the parliamentary debate, Mr. Bayrou said 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 Office scene — the place Mr. Zelenskyy was berated each by Mr. Trump and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance earlier than being requested to go away the White House — left “two victims.”
The first, Mr. Bayrou said, was Ukraine’s security.
The second was both the trans-Atlantic relationship with traditional American allies and Washington’s image, he said. Mr. Bayrou said that the Oval Office 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.”
Mr. Bayrou has been Mr. Macron’s Prime Minister since December. Although Bayrou would not communicate instantly for the presidency, the veteran French politician has lengthy been a essential accomplice for Mr. Macron. In opening his handle to Parliament, Mr. Bayrou stated that he was talking for Mr. Macron’s authorities.
Published – March 04, 2025 10:13 am IST
