Macron Is Trying to Get Back on the Right Side of History — and NATO
The French president is pushing for the western alliance to give Ukraine a clear path to membership, but several EU allies are skeptical after a string of missteps
French and Romanian soldiers during a NATO exercise in Romania, 2022.
Photographer: Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images
Around the time of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s brief uprising against the Russian government last month, a French warship was making its first trip to the Baltic.
The frigate Auvergne docked in Helsinki on June 24 in a show of support to NATO’s newest member, Finland. The deployment just 190 miles (300 kilometers) from Putin’s home city of St. Petersburg might also have been intended to demonstrate France’s renewed enthusiasm for the western alliance after decades of ambivalence.