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Home > Talking Europe > 'Not what you see on the map': French ambassador to Ukraine challenges Russia's victory narrative


	Podcast:		Talking Europe
	Episode:		'Not what you see on the map': French ambassador to Ukraine challenges Russia's victory narrative
	Category:		News & Politics
	Duration:		00:12:13
	Publish Date:		2026-01-09 16:00:13
	Description:		Nearly four years into Russia's full-scale invasion, the war in Ukraine grinds on, and the search for a viable off-ramp looks increasingly narrow. Speaking to FRANCE 24’s Douglas Herbert, France's ambassador to Ukraine, Gaël Veyssière, delivers a pointed rebuttal to Moscow's battlefield narrative, warning that the Kremlin's perception and reality are increasingly at odds. The US covert operation that led to the capture of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro is "bad news" for Russia, Veyssière says. He adds that Moscow is "embarrassed" and "ill at ease", forced to react cautiously as it balances the loss of a key ally with its desire not to antagonise US President Donald Trump amid discussions on Ukraine. Veyssière also pushes back against claims that the Venezuela operation gives Russian President Vladimir Putin license to act freely in his own "sphere of influence", arguing that Trump sees the United States as the world’s number-one power, with no true equals. Asked about security guarantees for Ukraine, the ambassador insists they are indispensable to any lasting peace. Russian objections to an international reassurance force, he argues, are largely "irrelevant", since any such deployment would take place on Ukrainian, not Russian, soil. Still, he acknowledges that Moscow could use the issue as leverage to block a ceasefire. If Putin insists on fighting until his territorial demands are met, Veyssière is blunt: there would be "no possibility of a ceasefire", because Ukraine will not "let its territories go". As for the battlefield, open-source estimates show Russian forces captured less than 1 percent of Ukraine's territory in all of 2025. That figure alone, Veyssière notes, exposes the Kremlin's claim of military success as disinformation. Russia may be pushing forward, but its version of events is "not what you see on the map", the ambassador says. Programme prepared by Oihana Almandoz, Perrine Desplats and Paul Guianvarc'h
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