By JOHN LEICESTER
Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]
PARIS (AP) — France’s prime minister decried the U.S. pause on providing military aid to Ukraine as “unbearable” on Tuesday, describing it as tantamount to abandoning Ukrainians and allowing for a possible victory by Russia.
“The word ‘suspension’ fools no one,” Prime Minister François Bayrou said, addressing French senators and mounting what was his second sharp criticism of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in as many days.
“The suspension in war of assistance to an aggressed country signifies that the aggressed country is being abandoned and that one accepts — or hopes — that its aggressor wins,” he said.
“It’s obviously unbearable,” Bayrou said.
The French premier, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, also argued against strong pressure that the White House is exerting on Ukraine to quickly negotiate an end to the fighting. Bayrou said that Ukraine needs to keep fighting for its very survival.
“If Russia stops fighting, the war stops. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine disappears,” Bayrou said.
Though the Trump administration announced the suspension in aid Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated later during his nightly address that his country had not received direct notification of the pause. He also said he stands ready to work with Trump on obtaining a lasting peace.
Macron, meanwhile, spoke by phone successively with Trump and Zelenskyy and reiterated “France’s determination to work with all the parties to achieve a solid and lasting peace in Ukraine,” his office said, without giving details of the discussion with Trump.
Macron’s prime minister, appointed in December, has become one of the sharpest French critics of the abrupt U-turn in Washington’s policy on Ukraine that Trump has executed since he and U.S. Vice President JD Vance publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an explosive meeting last week.
In an address on Monday to France’s lower house of parliament, the prime minister decried the Oval Office thrashing of Zelenskyy as a “staggering” show of “brutality” that aimed to humiliate Ukraine’s leader and bend him to the will of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to lawmakers again on Tuesday, Bayrou argued that the U.S. suspension of military aid could have repercussions both on and off the battlefields for Ukraine, impacting not only supplies of munitions, intelligence and communications and other military assistance, but also Ukrainian morale.
“The Ukrainians feel terribly abandoned and terribly alone,” he said.
Separately, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu posted a video of what he described as “dangerous behavior” by a Russian Su-35 fighter jet that he said buzzed a French Reaper drone that was conducting a surveillance mission in international airspace over the eastern Mediterranean on Sunday.
“Three successive close passes, which could have led to the loss of control of the drone, demonstrated an intent to restrict free air circulation in shared spaces,” the defense minister posted on X.
“This was a deliberate, unprofessional, and aggressive action that is unacceptable.”
___AP journalist Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed.
