French President Emmanual Macron set the record straight on how much aid Europe and the US have provided Ukraine in its defense of an existential war, in a cringeworthy moment during a press conference with US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday.
After fielding several questions related to the war in Ukraine and Trump’s pending peace negotiations, the US president responded to a question about frozen Russian assets by claiming that, unlike the US, Europe would be repaid for its monetary support to Ukraine – but Macron disagreed.
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“Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine, they get the money back,” Trump said.
“No,” Macron said, interrupting a US president who is unaccustomed to being called out on his misunderstanding of the facts . “To be frank, we paid 60 percent of the total effort,” he said.
Macron stopped Trump’s answer by grabbing his right forearm, European style, and the reality-TV-star-turned-president looked unsure of how to react, waving his free left hand as if to say, “Well, sort of.”
The French president continued to explain to the US president that European aid to Ukraine came in the same sort of financial packages as American aid, “Like the US: Loans, guarantees, grants,” Macron said. “We provided real money – to be clear.”
While Trump launched his remarks talking about the sense of “unity in the room” during their talks, the US leader elected on an “America First” platform looked away from the French president during most of this part of the conversation, shaking his head and often smirking.
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Macron, for his part, sat attentively on the edge of his yellow chair, hands in what business leaders often call a “triangle of power”, ready to make any factual redactions.
Macron laid out how frozen assets work for the new American leader. “We have $230 billion in frozen assets in Europe – Russian assets – but this is not as collateral for a loan, because this is not our belonging. So they are frozen.”
Most recently, the EU’s parliament in October endorsed a new macro-financial assistance (MFA) in the form of a $50 billion loan to help Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, based on the returns of the total frozen assets in Europe’s banks.
The body in Brussels explained at the time that the loan was “the EU’s part of a G7 package agreed last June, to provide up to $50 billion (approximately €45 billion) in financial support to Ukraine. The final amount that the EU will contribute could be lower, depending on the size of the loans provided by other G7 partners.”
Meanwhile, European leaders assembled in Kyiv on Monday reminded the world that Europe has contributed about €135 billion in all to Ukraine’s defense, whereas the US had contributed slightly less than that amount.
Sitting uncomfortably next to Trump, Macron continued that he would be happy if Russia conceded the total of the assets (estimated to be some €300 billion in all) as reparations for the damages they’ve caused in the war, reminding the gathering in the Oval Office, which included US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that “Russia is the aggressor.”
The idea that Western expenditures could be reimbursed via those frozen assets, rather than by taking half of the proceeds of Ukraine’s mined rare-earth minerals, is a proposal that has been raised by both the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, and European leaders such as Macron.
If “they’re ready to give [those assets] to us, super,” Macron said. “It will be a loan at the end of the day, and Russia will have paid that. This is my wish.”
Here, Trump returned. “If you believe that, it’s okay with me,” he said. “But they get their money back, and we don’t, and now we do.” Macron smiled at Trump as he ended the talks and told reporters they could look forward to more comments soon.
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