FRANCE PERSPECTIVE

Paris reads the letter as an opportunity for the European axis — not for Washington. Libération headlines "Volodymyr Zelensky proposes a face-to-face meeting to Vladimir Putin" and decodes the wording: "face-to-face" is the diplomatic expression that explicitly excludes Trump from the original setup. L'Express extends the analysis by revealing that Paris, Berlin and London now hope to resume direct negotiations with Putin — without an American intermediary and without waiting for the Iran file that paralyzes the White House. The French framing is consistent with a decade of Gaullo-Mitterrandism: the historic chance for Paris to reclaim its status as a direct interlocutor of the Kremlin, at the precise moment Trump's attention is elsewhere. The French press does not duck the difficulty — the Kremlin's contemptuous response ("he can come to Moscow whenever he wants") is called a humiliation — but it underlines a tactical detail: Zelensky did not wait for an American green light to write. This diplomatic autonomy is exactly what Paris has wanted for three years. The implicit consequence: if the letter leads to a real negotiation, it will be a "European format", not a "Trump format". For Paris, the French position is not selfless: France wants to be the face of a European diplomacy that would negotiate without Washington, and the letter provides the justification. The test will come in the days that follow: if a Putin-Zelensky meeting is being prepared, Macron will want symbolic association — France would not accept a format from which it is absent.