French PM Bayrou criticises Trump’s 'brutal' humiliation of Zelensky

French PM François Bayrou has chastised US president Donald Trump on March 3rd for his harsh treatment of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, reported RFI.

Bayrou described it as a display of “brutality” designed to humiliate Zelensky and coerce him into agreeing to a deal favourable to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Bayrou praised Zelensky and the fact he refused to “fold” to US pressure, while describing Trump and Vance’s attacks on the Ukrainian leader as “a shocking scene, marked by brutality and a desire to humiliate.”

“All this was summed up in one phrase before the planet’s cameras: ‘Either you find a deal with Putin or we will abandon you,’” Bayrou stated, in an apparent reference to comments made by Trump in the Oval Office. Trump’s actual words were “you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.”

Bayrou said the events had endangered both “the security of Ukraine” and “a certain idea of the alliance” between the United States and Europe.

He stated that the Oval Office scene “compromised another fundamental alliance: the one that the United States had with themselves, their history, and with a certain ideal of defending the law, of defending the weak against the forces of tyranny.”

The PM spoke of “an historic situation that in our eyes is the most serious, the most destabilised, the most dangerous of all those that our country and our continent have experienced since the end of World War II.”

“It is up to us Europeans to guarantee the security and defence of Europe,” he said recently at a debate on Ukraine and European security.

RFI