What’s
the point of talking to Vladimir Putin? It’s a question that divides
European leaders amid the terrible human and economic costs of Russia’s
war in Ukraine. Advocates of diplomacy
stress the need to halt the fighting to save lives and ease a potential
global food crisis triggered by Russian blockades of Ukraine’s grain
ports. Soaring energy prices as the European Union seeks to break
dependence on Russia’s oil and gas add to political pressures at home. Opponents
say engagement amounts to talking to a war criminal whose denial of any
invasion plans showed his word is worthless. Why negotiate with a
blackmailer? Key reading: The
tensions are palpable and geographic. French President Emmanuel
Macron’s call not to “humiliate” Russia earned rebukes from Ukraine and
rueful head-shaking from the EU’s eastern states that remember Moscow’s
rule in the former Communist bloc. Macron
has spoken repeatedly with Putin, to little obvious effect. Former
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who warned yesterday that isolating
Russia isn’t possible, was also phoning the Russian president to urge a
ceasefire until Putin stopped taking her calls, as Arne Delfs reports.
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