France has meanwhile seized on the Ukraine crisis to advance its own ambitions for an E.U.-led security framework that could undermine NATO. In an address to the European Parliament, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the E.U. to launch a separate dialogue with Moscow over ways to reduce the tensions, potentially setting up a rival track to the U.S.-led diplomacy that has so far dominated the West’s efforts to tamp down the tensions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/23/europe-divided-ukraine/
https://twitter.com/samramani2/status/1485996981378076677?s=21
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This is a variation of France's old "Third Way" approach during the Cold War. They offered themselves as a "power" other nations could align to without selling their souls to the Soviets or the U.S. In reality, it was a way to see themselves as a world power, without all the effort and ability (and I must note, in the end, everyone knew they would still tie to NATO - and the U.S. was still keeping them in the pipeline of nuclear info the create better arms so they would add to Western deterrence). The only leverage Biden has is pipeline sanctions (but the current admin dumped those, which Trump had in place). The Germans and others are more dependent than ever on the gas that is flowing and will in the future, and they have current issues with power in part due to dumping nuke reactors without having the capacity in place to handle the loss--they have to play along with what the Russians want.
Most Russians rely on the money that the government uses to subsidize their lives via energy revenues. We have only aided them as we have now returned to limiting our own potential production (nothing like the U.S. going hat in hand to OPEC asking them to increase production after we intentionally cut our own a few months before--the current administration is playing checkers at a chess tournament). Just a few years back Putin was hurting as those revenues had declined in light of growing U.S. production and falling market prices. Now, not so much.
