“For ten years, I have been warning against the refusal of Westerners to take into account Russian demands on the expansion of NATO. This attitude leads today to a dangerous confrontation which could have been avoided”, launched this Thursday François Fillon, shortly after Vladimir Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine. François Fillon is now a member of the board of directors of the Russian petrochemical giant Sibur. This group is notably controlled by Leonid Mikhelson, one of the richest men in Russia and by Gennadi Timtchenko, a close associate of President Putin and who has been targeted by recent sanctions from the United Kingdom.
Even if the former Prime Minister of Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) says he condemns “the use of force in Ukraine”, this outing has earned him an outpouring of criticism.
Already, Clément Beaune, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, had estimated on February 20 at the microphone of Radio J: “When you are a former Prime Minister, and I have respect for the Prime Minister that François Fillon was, you dishonors when in times (…) like this, one puts oneself at the service of Russian financial interests close to the Russian state. »
Yannick Jadot had shared this opinion during his passage on the set of C to you, Tuesday, February 22. “You have a former Prime Minister, François Fillon, who was Prime Minister of France for five years, who in my opinion knows almost all the secrets of France and who today sells his address book, his information, to Vladimir Putin. It’s shocking,” he said.
“This half-condemnation does not honor you”
But since this morning, the attacks are even more virulent. “François Fillon is an employee of Vladimir Poutine” and “we will have to put an end to all these betrayals”, affirmed on BFMTV the MEP Public Square Raphaël Glucksmann. LREM deputy Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the Law Commission, considered for her part that “No, there are no buts. War is the act of whoever decides to wage it. This half-conviction does not honor you” to François Fillon on Twitter.
Obviously, the situation is more complicated at LR. The number 3 of LR Aurélien Pradié estimated on Public Senate that François Fillon “no longer belongs to political life” and that he therefore had “not to comment on his situation”. The day before, LR presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse had used similar arguments in a program on BFMTV before the invasion of Ukraine, saying that “François Fillon has left politics” and “has the right to make a living, we must leave him alone”.