MUNICH — President Emmanuel Macron of France known as on Friday for an “intensification” of Western help for Ukraine, however, in contrast to different leaders addressing the Munich Safety Convention, he additionally underscored that peace negotiations have been the last word objective.

Mr. Macron declared that the “neocolonialist and imperialist” aggression in opposition to Ukraine unleashed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “should fail,” calling Russia’s struggle “catastrophic and unjustified.”

On the identical time, he used phrases like “dialogue” and “re-engagement” to explain an eventual interplay with Russia sooner or later, phrases that Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, averted in a speech instantly earlier than Mr. Macron’s that was uniformly resolute and supplied no prediction of an finish to the year-old struggle.

Answering questions in English after delivering a speech in French, Mr. Macron stated: “Now the query is how to withstand? Methods to assist the Ukrainians to make on the bottom one thing which can power Russia to come back again to the desk on the situations of Ukraine.”

However Ukrainian navy resistance couldn’t be the entire story, he informed the viewers. “None of us will change geography” and Russia is “on European soil,” he stated. Provided that, “we must negotiate.”

Of all main Western leaders, Mr. Macron has most persistently referred to the inevitability of negotiation with Mr. Putin’s Russia. He has stood out in arguing that peace talks should embody safety “ensures to Russia.”

Such discuss has typically irritated Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, in addition to leaders of European Union and NATO states bordering Russia, who’ve lengthy seen their Western allies as being naïve about the specter of Russian aggression. They contend that solely an outright defeat of Mr. Putin — no matter that will imply — is suitable.

Mr. Macron’s intricately calibrated argument on Friday, combining expressions of resolve with the conviction that motive will sooner or later demand a compromise to finish the struggle, was typical of a pacesetter who has earned the sobriquet the “at-the-same-time president” due to his penchant for back-and-forth analyses.

The objective of negotiation, he stated in response to questions, must be “an imperfect stability” that preserves “one thing sustainable for Russia itself.” However he added that it was far too early to attempt to formulate any safety association that will finish the struggle on phrases acceptable to Kyiv and Moscow.

“This isn’t the time for dialogue,” he stated. The West should face the truth that though the “weeks and months” forward may very well be “decisive,” the struggle would possibly final for much longer, Mr. Macron stated. It was essential, he argued, for Europe and america “to be credible over the long run,” if Russia was to come back to the negotiating desk in a suitable manner.

Mr. Macron seems to have traveled a long way since declaring final yr that it was essential to keep away from “humiliating” Russia and telling Ukraine it must wait “many years” to hitch the European Union. Whereas he spoke to Mr. Putin frequently simply earlier than the struggle and in its first a number of weeks — clocking 17 calls between early December 2021 and late March 2022 — Mr. Macron has not spoken to the Russian chief since September.

A gathering this month in Paris between Mr. Macron and Mr. Zelensky was effusive in its tone of mutual friendship and help. However an interview given simply earlier than the assembly, by Mr. Zelensky to the French newspaper Le Figaro and the German weekly journal “Der Spiegel,” revealed lingering tensions.

In response to a query about whether or not Mr. Macron had modified, the Ukrainian chief stated: “I consider he has modified and that this time he has modified for actual.” Mr. Zelensky clearly meant that, in his view, Mr. Macron had absolutely and unambiguously embraced the Ukrainian trigger.

The barbed comment didn’t go unnoticed by Mr. Macron, officers near him informed the French each day Le Monde.

Mr. Macron has insisted that his views have remained largely fixed: denunciation of Russia’s unlawful aggression in opposition to a sovereign state; help for Ukraine’s struggle effort to the purpose of “victory” (a phrase Mr. Scholz has declined to make use of to explain the target of German help for Kyiv); and insistence that peace negotiations might be wanted sooner or later with Moscow.

He has additionally been insistent on the necessity to bolster European navy capability alongside NATO, and abandon the mind-set of counting on america for defense. He known as on European states on Friday to “make investments massively in our protection,” citing deliberate French navy spending of $427 billion between 2024 and 2030, or $107 billion greater than within the previous six-year interval.

“It’s on the premise of a psychological and materials rearmament that, I consider, we are going to enable Europe to occupy its rightful place in future safety preparations,” Mr. Macron stated.

Mr. Scholz additionally spoke of the necessity to higher combine and bolster the European protection business, however alluded repeatedly to Germany’s intense cooperation with america all through the struggle.

Mr. Macron informed the viewers in Munich that Russia had failed on a number of fronts since invading Ukraine: Its conviction that victory can be fast proved baseless; it had grow to be a power for “dysfunction” on this planet, as symbolized by the “neo-Mafioso” Wagner mercenaries working as an arm of the Kremlin; it had consolidated the very Ukrainian nationhood it denied; and it had bolstered a NATO alliance that Mr. Putin demonizes, with Sweden and Finland having determined to hitch.

A yr in the past, Mr. Macron stated, Mr. Putin had informed him in Moscow that Wagner operatives “weren’t ours, actually they pose us issues in Russia.” Mr. Macron conceded that he had believed Mr. Putin on the time, however stated the reality of Wagner’s prison actions as brokers of the Kremlin was now evident.

France and Russia have clashed in a number of African nations the place Wagner is lively. Moscow has waged an intense propaganda struggle in opposition to France, portraying it as an exploitative former colonial energy in Africa.

Nonetheless, Mr. Macron famous, Russia endures — as does Mr. Putin.

“I don’t consider for a second in regime change” in Moscow, Mr. Macron stated, describing regime adjustments all over the world in “the previous many years” as “a complete failure.”