On the eve of Sunday’s first round of the presidential election in France, quite a contretemps has erupted over the telephone calls between President Macron and President Putin. The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, delivered a speech this week at Kraków, where he demanded: “President Macron, how many times have you negotiated with Putin? What have you achieved?” And the coup de grâce: “Would you negotiate with Hitler, with Stalin, with Pol Pot?”We ourselves are not ready to bring Hitler or Pol Pot into this. We are, though, wondering what in blazes Messrs. Macron and Putin have been up to in the — 17 is the last number we saw — phone calls about which such a fuss is being made. They even met face to face in Moscow. Mr. Macron, to the dismay of purist supporters of the North Atlantic Treaty, has spoken of a rightful place for Russia in the jigsaw puzzle that is modern Europe.Mr. Macron himself reacted by lambasting the Polish premier’s comments as “baseless” and “scandalous.” He also told the French broadcaster TF1 that he takes full responsibility for speaking to Mr. Putin “in the name of France” (in January the flag of the European Union was finally removed from the Arc de Triomphe). In any event, Mr. Macron says that he carried on the talks “to avoid the war and to build a new architecture for peace in Europe.”From our side of the Atlantic, we find it remarkable that there have been no calls for Mr. Macron to disclose the transcripts of his parleys with Mr. Putin. We get that things are done differently in France. Indeed, voters are about to go to the polls to start deciding whether to give Mr. Macron a new term in the Elysée Palace. We’re told the French don’t expect presidents to disclose such things, owing to their “monarchical DNA.”Only last month, though, Mr. Macron did fire the head of French military intelligence, General Eric Vidaud, for failing to predict that Russia would invade Ukraine. The Elysée says that Mr. Macron had been in phone contact with his Russian counterpart in the days leading up to the Russian invasion on February 24. Another French general told Le Monde earlier this year that “The Americans said that the Russians were going to attack, and they were right.”By implication, the French authorities were if not dead wrong then certainly on the wrong trail — a lapse not attributable to General Vidaud alone. While German intelligence intercepted Russian soldiers discussing the shooting of Ukrainian civilians, the magazine Der Spiegel reported, French intelligence is not known to have picked up these signals or to have passed relevant secrets to the press.Ever the doer and diplomat — but certainly no latter-day Napoleon either — Mr. Macron also told French television that the Polish prime minister was from a “far-right party” and was “supporting” his rival Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election this month. Mr. Macron went further Friday, calling Mr. Morawiecki “an anti-Semite of the extreme right” and “under EU investigation” to boot.A Morawiecki spokesman called Mr. Macron’s accusations “incomprehensible,” though they are understandable in the electoral fray in which Mr. Morawiecki is likely rooting for Marine Le Pen, who on the eve of the vote trails Monsieur Macron by only five points while the Ukraine war grinds on. In America in recent years, the Macron-Putin tapes would have already been leaked by the “deep state.” Where is l’état profond when the voters need it?
