De Gaulle’s grandson backs Putin and blames the US for Ukraine war

Pierre de Gaulle says Russia are the victim, accuses US of being responsible for the Ukraine war and using it to ‘destabilise Europe’.

Pierre de Gaulle’s views have caused little shock because, although extreme, they contain echoes of public figures including French President Macron. Picture: Alamy

The grandson of Charles de Gaulle has emerged as a supporter of President Putin, embarrassing the family of France’s wartime saviour and founder of the modern state.

Pierre de Gaulle, 59, said the United States was responsible for the Ukraine war and Russia was the victim, a view that is fairly widespread in France. “The French are paying a heavy price for a war provoked by the US to turn Europe into a vassal,” he told Le Parisien.

“Public opinion in France is beginning to understand what the evil game of the Americans is today,” he told another news site. “By using lies . . . within NATO, the United States has managed to use the Ukrainian crisis to destabilise Europe.”

The unvarnished views of De Gaulle, a business consultant based in Geneva, are on the outer margin of French sympathy for the Kremlin. Coming from a scion of what amounts to the country’s royal family, however, they have shone a light on the indulgence towards Russia that is still coming from President Macron, his opponents on the left and right and the intellectual elite.

De Gaulle, the youngest of four sons of Philippe de Gaulle, 101, said it was his “duty to restore the truth as heir to the general”. The family, however, distanced itself from his views. The late president courted Moscow and rejected Washington but never aligned France with Russia, they said. “The analysis of my brother Pierre only involves him - not me or our family and even less the general,” Yves de Gaulle, 71, said.

The late president, General Charles de Gaulle, courted Moscow and rejected Washington but never aligned France with Russia, according to family. Picture: AP

De Gaulle’s views have caused little shock because, although extreme, they contain echoes of public figures including Macron and Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative former president. They condemn the Russian invasion as illegal and barbarous but share a widespread French belief that NATO’s eastwards expansion contributed to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

Sympathy for Putin has been amplified in intellectual circles by a best-selling novel, Le mage du Kremlin (The Wizard of the Kremlin), by Giuliano da Empoli, a Swiss-Italian political adviser. Critically acclaimed and recipient of the 2022 Academie francaise literary prize, the book about Putin and his circle has dazzled ministers and turned its author into a Kremlinologist, to the dismay of Russia experts who say the work casts Putin in a falsely favourable light. “Da Empoli does not know Russia and every line of the book shows it,” Cecile Vaissie, a professor at Rennes University, wrote. She called the book Russian propaganda tailored to the Left Bank thinking classes.

Macron has moved away from his focus on mediating with Putin and “not humiliating Russia” and is now supplying heavier weapons to Ukraine. France now wants a Ukrainian “victory”, Macron said in his New Year’s address but he is keeping the door open to negotiation “when Ukraine decides the time is right”.

An Ifop poll last month showed that 69 per cent of the French approve of western arms supplies to Ukraine but believe that the priority should be on negotiating an end to the war.

The Times