Emmanuel Macron’s Ukraine mission buys time, but works no miracles

“I DON’T BELIEVE in spontaneous miracles,” declared Emmanuel Macron shortly after boarding the presidential plane from Paris for Moscow on February 7th. The French president looked unreasonably calm ahead of one of the more testing diplomatic trips he has made since he was elected five years ago. It was a test both of his ambition to take over as Europe’s leading diplomat and of his capacity to do anything meaningful to ease tensions in the . After five hours of late-night talks with Vladimir Putin, Mr Macron flew to Kyiv on February 8th and stood beside , the Ukrainian president, whose country lives under the threat of invasion. Mr Macron said that he had secured a pledge from the Russian president that, as things stood, Mr Putin “would not be the cause of an escalation” of the crisis on the border with Ukraine.