France's prime minister tears into Trump's attack on Zelenskyy as a staggering show of 'brutality'

President Donald Trump meets with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

PARIS — France’s prime minister on Monday tore into U.S. President Donald Trump’s Oval Office thrashing of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling it a staggering show of “brutality” that aimed to humiliate Ukraine’s leader and bend him to the will of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The extraordinarily frank criticism from Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, speaking in a parliamentary debate on Ukraine, diverged from the more nuanced tone that French President Emmanuel Macron has adopted in the wake of the clash at the White House on Friday and dropped the diplomatic niceties that customarily mark French-U.S. relations.

“On Friday night, in the Oval Office of the White House, a staggering scene unfurled before the lenses of the entire world, marked by brutality, a desire to humiliate, with the goal of making Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fold through threats, so that he gives in to the demands of his aggressors,” Bayrou said.

“All this was summed up in one phrase before the planet’s cameras: `Either you find a deal with Putin or we will abandon you,”' Bayrou said, apparently referring to Trump’s comments in the Oval Office. Trump’s actual words to Zelenskyy were “you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.”

Continuing his speech to France’s parliament, Bayrou added: “For the honor of democratic responsibility, for the honor of Ukraine and, I dare say, for the honor of Europe, President Zelenskyy did not fold and I think we can show him our appreciation.”

Lawmakers got to their feet in the National Assembly chamber to applaud.

Bayrou’s grim outlook for Europe

In opening the parliamentary debate, Bayrou said that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its diplomatic fallout have left Europe in grave peril. He spoke of “an historic situation that in our eyes is the most serious, the most destabilized, the most dangerous of all those that our country and our continent have experienced since the end of World War II.”

The French prime minister said that the Oval Office scene -- where Zelenskyy was berated both by Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance before being asked to leave the White House -- left “two victims.”

The first, Bayrou said, was Ukraine’s security.

The second was both the trans-Atlantic relationship with traditional American allies and Washington’s image, he said. Bayrou said that the Oval Office scene “compromised another fundamental alliance: the one that the United States had with themselves, their history, and with a certain ideal of defending the law, of defending the weak against the forces of tyranny.”

Bayrou has been Macron’s prime minister since December. Although Bayrou doesn’t speak directly for the presidency, the veteran French politician has long been a crucial partner for Macron. In opening his address to parliament, Bayrou said that he was speaking for Macron’s government.

The Associated Press. John Leicester reported from Le Pecq.