From the market stall outside Paris that she’s run for 40 years, Yvette Robert can see firsthand how soaring prices are weighing on France’s presidential election and turning the first round of voting Sunday into a nail-biter for incumbent President Emmanuel Macron.

Shoppers, increasingly worried about how to make ends meet, are buying ever-smaller quantities of Robert’s neatly stacked fruits and vegetables, she says. And some of her clients no longer come at all to the market for its baguettes, cheeses and other tasty offerings. Robert suspects that with fuel prices so high, some can no longer afford to take their vehicles to shop.

“People are scared — with everything that’s going up, with prices for fuel going up,” she said Friday as campaigning concluded for act one of the two-part French election drama, held against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term. But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages. The pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices that are hitting low-income households particularly hard subsequently roared back as dominant election themes. They could drive many voters Sunday into the arms of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Macron’s political nemesis.

Macron, now 44, trounced Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest president in 2017. The win for the former banker who, unlike Le Pen, is a fervent proponent of European collaboration was seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, both in 2016.

In courting voters, Macron has economic successes to point to: The French economy is rebounding faster than expected from the battering of COVID-19, with a 2021 growth rate of 7%, the highest since 1969. Unemployment is down to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, sparking Europe’s worst security crisis since World War II, Macron also got a polling bump, with people rallying around the wartime leader.

But the 53-year-old Le Pen is a now a more polished, formidable and savvy political foe as she makes her third attempt to become France’s first woman president. And she has campaigned particularly hard and for months on cost-of-living concerns, capitalizing on the issue that pollsters say is foremost on voters’ minds.

Le Pen also pulled off two remarkable feats. Despite her plans to sharply curtail immigration and dial back some rights for Muslims in France, she nevertheless appears to have convinced growing numbers of voters that she is no longer the dangerous, racist nationalist extremist that critics, including Macron, accuse her of being.

She’s done that partly by diluting some of her rhetoric and fieriness. She also had outside help: A presidential run by Eric Zemmour, an even more extreme far-right rabble-rouser with repeated convictions for hate speech, has had the knock-on benefit for Le Pen of making her look almost mainstream by comparison.

Secondly, and also stunning: Le Pen has adroitly sidestepped any significant blowback for her previous perceived closeness with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She went to the Kremlin to meet him during her last presidential campaign in 2017. But in the wake of the war in Ukraine, that potential embarrassment doesn’t appear to have turned Le Pen’s supporters against her. She has called the invasion “absolutely indefensible” and said Putin’s behavior cannot be excused “in any way.”

At her market stall, Robert says she plans to vote Macron, partly because of the billions of euros (dollars) that his government doled out at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to keep people, businesses and France’s economy afloat. When food markets closed, Robert got 1,500 euros ($1,600) a month to tide her over.

“He didn’t leave anyone by the side of the road,” she says of Macron.

But she thinks that this time, Le Pen has a chance, too.

“She has changed the way she speaks,” Robert said. “She has learned to moderate herself.”

Barring a monumental surprise, both Macron and Le Pen are expected to advance again from the first-round field of 12 candidates, to set up a winner-takes-all rematch in the second-round vote April 24. Polls suggest that far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is likely to finish out of the running in third place. Some of France’s overseas territories in the Pacific, the Caribbean and South America vote Saturday, before Sunday voting on the French mainland.

When Macron made a campaign stop in Poissy, the town west of Paris where Robert has her stall, in early March, pollsters had him leading Le Pen by double digits. Although a Le Pen victory still appears improbable, much of Macron’s advantage has subsequently evaporated. Kept busy by the war in Ukraine, Macron may be paying a price for his somewhat subdued campaign, which made him look aloof to some voters.

Marketgoer Marie-Helene Hirel, a 64-year-old retired tax collector, voted for Macron in 2017 but said she’s too angry with him to do so again. Struggling on her pension with rising prices, Hirel said she is thinking of switching her vote to Le Pen, who has promised fuel and energy tax cuts that Macron says would be ruinous.

Although Le Pen’s “relations with Putin worry me,” Hirel said that voting for her would be a way of protesting against Macron and what she perceives as his failure to better protect people from the sting of inflation.

“Now I’m also part of the ‘all against Macron’ camp,” she said. “He is making fools of us all.” 
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that he is committed to pressing for peace despite Russian attacks on civilians that have stunned the world, and he renewed his plea for countries to send more weapons ahead of an expected surge in fighting in the country’s east.

He made the comments in an interview with The Associated Press a day after at least 52 people were killed in a strike on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, and as evidence of civilian killings came to light after Russian troops failed to seize the capital where he has hunkered down, Kyiv.

“No one wants to negotiate with a person or people who tortured this nation. It’s all understandable. And as a man, as a father, I understand this very well,” Zelenskyy said. But “we don’t want to lose opportunities, if we have them, for a diplomatic solution.”

Wearing the olive drab that has marked his transformation into a wartime leader, he looked visibly exhausted yet animated by a drive to persevere. He spoke to the AP inside the presidential office complex, where windows and hallways are protected by towers of sandbags and heavily armed soldiers.

“We have to fight, but fight for life. You can’t fight for dust when there is nothing and no people. That’s why it is important to stop this war,” he said.

Russian troops that withdrew from northern Ukraine are now regrouping for what is expected to be an intensified push to retake the eastern Donbas region, including the besieged port city of Mariupol that Ukrainian fighters are striving to defend.

Zelenskyy said he is confident Ukrainians would accept peace despite the horrors they have witnessed in the more than six-week-long war.

Those included gruesome images of bodies of civilians found in yards, parks and city squares and buried in mass graves in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha after Russian troops withdrew. Ukrainian and Western leaders have accused Moscow of war crimes.

Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged. It also put the blame on Ukraine for the attack on the train station as thousands of people rushed to flee ahead of an expected Russian offensive.

Despite hopes for peace, Zelenskyy acknowledged that he must be “realistic” about the prospects for a swift resolution given that negotiations have so far been limited to low-level talks that do not include Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskyy displayed a palpable sense of resignation and frustration when asked whether the supplies of weapons and other equipment his country has received from the United States and other Western nations was en

ough to turn the tide of the war. “Not yet,” he said, switching to English for emphasis. “Of course it’s not enough.”

Still, he noted that there has been increased support from Europe and said deliveries of U.S. weapons have been accelerating.

Just this week, neighboring Slovakia, a European Union member, donated its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine in response to Zelenskyy’s appeal to help “close the skies” to Russian warplanes and missiles.

Some of that support has come through visits by European leaders.

After meeting Zelenskyy in Kyiv earlier Saturday, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he expects more EU sanctions against Russia even as he defended his country’s opposition so far to cutting off deliveries of Russian natural gas.

The U.S., EU and United Kingdom responded to the images from Bucha with more sanctions, including targeting Putin’s adult daughters. While the EU went after the Russian energy sector for the first time by banning coal, it has so far failed to agree on cutting off the much more lucrative oil and natural gas funding Putin’s war chest, but that Europe relies on to generate electricity, fill fuel tanks and keep industry churning.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson also made an unannounced visit to meet Zelenskyy, with his office saying they discussed Britain’s “long-term support.”

In Kyiv, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented Ukraine’s leader Friday with a questionnaire marking the first step for applying for EU membership. The head of the bloc’s executive arm said the process for completing the questionnaire could take weeks — an unusually fast turnaround — though securing membership would take far longer.

Zelenskyy turned introspective when asked what impact the pace of arms deliveries had for his people and whether more lives could have been saved if the help had come sooner.

“Very often we look for answers in someone else, but I often look for answers in myself. Did we do enough to get them?” he said of the weapons. “Did we do enough for these leaders to believe in us? Did we do enough?”

He paused and shook his head.

“Are we the best for this place and this time? Who knows? I don’t know. You question yourself,” he said. 
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U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Saturday joined the stream of European leaders showing their support for Ukraine by traveling to the nation’s capital for face-to-face meetings with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Johnson’s surprise visit included a pledge of new military assistance, including 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems. This came a day after he promised to send an additional 100 million pounds ($130 million) of high-grade military equipment to Ukraine, saying Britain wanted to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.

Johnson also confirmed further economic support, guaranteeing an additional $500 million in World Bank lending to Ukraine, taking Britain’s total loan guarantee to up to $1 billion.

“Today I met my friend President @ZelenskyyUa in Kyiv as a show of our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine,” Johnson said on Twitter. “We’re setting out a new package of financial & military aid which is a testament of our commitment to his country’s struggle against Russia’s barbaric campaign.”

The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said “the conversation was rich and constructive,” but offered no details.

An image of the two leaders meeting was posted online by the Ukrainian Embassy in London with the headline: “Surprise,” and a winking smiley face.

The package of military aid Britain announced Friday includes more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, another 800 anti-tank missiles and precision munitions capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target.

“Ukraine has defied the odds and pushed back Russian forces from the gates of Kyiv, achieving the greatest feat of arms of the 21st century,” Johnson said in a statement. “It is because of President Zelenskyy’s resolute leadership and the invincible heroism and courage of the Ukrainian people that Putin’s monstrous aims are being thwarted.”

As Zelenskyy makes a continuous round of virtual appearances to drum up support from lawmakers around the world, an increasing number of European leaders have decided the time is right to travel to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, for in-person talks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was in Kyiv on Friday, following earlier visits from the Czech, Polish and Slovenian prime ministers.

Nehammer met with Zelenskyy earlier Saturday and pledged that the EU would continue to ratchet up sanctions against Russia “until the war stops.”

“As long as people are dying, every sanction is still insufficient,” he said, adding that Austrian embassy staff will return to Kyiv from western Ukraine.

Von der Leyen, who heads the European Union’s executive branch, traveled to Warsaw on Saturday to lead a fundraising event for Ukraine. She was joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda, with Zelenskyy and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appearing by video link.

At the end of the 90-minute meeting, von der Leyen said 10.1 billion euros ($11 billion) had been raised for Ukrainian refugees.

The event was held in Warsaw because more than 2.5 million of the 4.4 million people who have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began February 24 have entered Poland. Many have stayed, though some have moved on to other countries.

Convened jointly by von der Leyen and Trudeau, the event sought to attract pledges from governments, global celebrities and average citizens.

It ended with Julian Lennon singing his father John Lennon’s peace song “Imagine,” which he said is the first time he did so publicly.

Julian Lennon posted on social media that he always said he would only sing the song if it was the “end of the world.” He says it’s the right song to sing now because “the war on Ukraine is an unimaginable tragedy,” and he felt compelled to respond in the most significant way that he could.
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Civilian evacuations moved forward Saturday in patches of battle-scarred eastern Ukraine a day after a missile strike killed at least 52 people at a train station where thousands were waiting to leave the increasingly vulnerable region before an expected Russian onslaught.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded a tough global response to Friday’s train station attack in Kramatorsk, calling it the latest sign of war crimes by Russian forces and hoping to prod Western backers to step up their response to help his country defend itself.

“All world efforts will be directed to establish every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the command and how this strike was agreed,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, his voice rising in anger.

Russia denied it was responsible and accused Ukraine’s military of firing on the station to try to turn blame for civilian slayings on Moscow. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman detailed the missile’s trajectory and Ukrainian troop positions to bolster the argument. Western experts and Ukrainian authorities insisted that Russia launched the missile.

Ukraine’s state railway company said in a statement that residents of the country’s contested Donbas region, where Russia has refocused its forces after failing to take over the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, could flee through other train stations on Saturday.

“The railways do not stop the task of taking everyone to safety,” the statement on the messaging app Telegram said.

Watch related video by Henry Ridgwell:

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 10 evacuation corridors were planned for Saturday in hopes of allowing residents to leave war zones in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which comprise the Donbas, as well as neighboring Zaporizhzhia.

Ukrainian authorities have called on civilians to get out ahead of an imminent, stepped-up offensive by Russian forces. Britain’s Defense Ministry reported Saturday that Russian naval forces were launching cruise missiles to support the ground operations in eastern Ukraine, including in the port cities of Mykolaiv and Mariupol.

Photos taken after Friday’s missile strike showed corpses covered with tarpaulins, and the remnants of a rocket painted with the words “For the children” in Russian. The phrasing seemed to suggest the missile was sent to avenge the loss or subjugation of children, although its exact meaning remained unclear.

The attack came as Ukrainian authorities worked to identify victims and document possible war crimes by Russian soldiers in northern Ukraine. The mayor of Bucha, a town near Kyiv where graphic evidence of civilian slayings emerged after the Russians withdrew, said search teams were still finding the bodies of people shot at close range in yards, parks and city squares.

On Friday, workers unearthed the bodies of 67 people from a mass grave near a church, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.

After failing to occupy Kyiv in the face of stiff resistance, Russian forces have set their sights on eastern Ukraine. Many of the civilians now trying to evacuate are accustomed to living in or near a war zone because Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 in the Donbas.

The same week Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of areas controlled by the separatists and said he planned to send troops in to protect residents of the mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region.

Although the Kramatorsk train station is in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in the Donbas, the separatists, who work closely with Russian troops, blamed Ukraine for the attack.

Western experts, however, dismissed Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s assertion that Russian forces “do not use” Tochka-U missiles, the type that hit the station. A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said Russian forces have used the missile — and that given the strike’s location and impact, it was likely Russia’s.

Ukrainian authorities and Western officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of committing atrocities in the war that began with Russia’s February 24 invasion. A total of 176 children have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, while 324 more have been wounded, the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office said Saturday.

Ukrainian authorities have warned they expect to find more mass killings once they reach the southern port city of Mariupol, which is also in the Donbas and has been subjected to a monthlong blockade and intense fighting.

As journalists who had been largely absent from the city began to trickle back in, new images emerged of the devastation from an airstrike on a theater last month that reportedly killed hundreds of civilians seeking shelter.

Military analysts had predicted for weeks that Russia would succeed in taking Mariupol but said Ukrainian defenders were still putting up a fight. The city’s location on the Sea of Azov is critical to establishing a land bridge from the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine eight years ago.

Some of the grisliest evidence of atrocities so far has been found in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv, from which Russian troops pulled back in recent days. An international organization formed to identify the dead and missing from the 1990s Balkans conflicts is sending a team of forensics experts to Ukraine to help put names to bodies.

In an excerpted interview with American broadcaster CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Friday, Zelenskyy cited communications intercepted by the Ukrainian security service as evidence of Russian war crimes. The authenticity of the recordings could not be independently verified.

“There are [Russian] soldiers talking with their parents about what they stole and who they abducted. There are recordings of [Russian] prisoners of war who admitted to killing people,” he said. “There are pilots in prison who had maps with civilian targets to bomb. There are also investigations being conducted based on the remains of the dead.”

The deaths of civilians at the train station brought renewed expressions of outrage from Western leaders and pledges that Russia would face further reprisals for its actions in Ukraine. On Saturday, Russia’s Defense Ministry tried to counter the dominant international narrative by again raising the specter Ukraine planting false flags and misinformation.

A Russian ministry spokesman, Major Gen. Igor Konashenkov, alleged Ukraine’s security services were preparing a “cynical staged” media operation in Irpin, another town near Kyiv. Konashenkov said the plan was to show — falsely, he said — more civilian casualties at the hands of the Russians and to stage the slaying of a fake Russian intelligence team that intended to kill witnesses. The claims could not be independently verified.

A senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments said Friday the Pentagon believes Russia has lost between 15% and 20% of its combat power overall since the war began.

While some combat units are withdrawing to be resupplied in Russia, Moscow has added thousands of troops around Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, in the country’s east, the official said.  

Ukrainian officials have almost daily pleaded with Western powers to send more arms, and to further punish Russia with sanctions, including the exclusion of Russian banks from the global financial system and a total European Union embargo on Russian gas and oil.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Saturday was the latest in a parade of top leaders from the European Union to visit Zelenskyy in Kyiv. The head of the EU’s executive arm, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, gave the Ukrainian president a questionnaire Friday that could lead to Ukraine’s membership in the 27-member-country bloc.

Zelenskyy wryly promised to fast-track a response.
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Their government still unrecognized by any country in the world, Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have found a way to beat international isolation: opening diplomatic ties with neighboring countries and others, with an eye to gaining formal recognition.

In recent months, at least four countries — China, Pakistan, Russia and Turkmenistan — have accredited Taliban-appointed diplomats, even though all have refused to recognize the 8-month-old government in Afghanistan.

Last month, Russia became the latest country to establish diplomatic ties with the Taliban when its Foreign Ministry accredited Taliban diplomat Jamal Nasir Gharwal as Afghan charge d’affaires in Moscow.

“We regard this as a step towards the resumption of full-fledged diplomatic contacts,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.

Although Zakharova said it was premature “to talk about official recognition of the Taliban,” the move is not sitting well in Washington, where officials are concerned it could confer undeserved legitimacy on the Taliban.

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. and its allies “remain deeply troubled by recent steps the Taliban have taken, including steps to restrict education and travel for girls and women.”

“Now is not the time to take any steps to lend credibility to the Taliban or normalize relations,” the spokesperson said in response to a query from VOA. “This move sends the wrong signal to the Taliban.”

In the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last August, the U.S. and other Western countries shut down their diplomatic posts in Kabul. But they’ve maintained contact with the group, if only to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid into the country and influence Taliban policies.

The countries that have received Taliban diplomats all maintain embassies in Afghanistan.

Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Kabul and the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, said it was a “mistake” for Russia and other nations to accredit Taliban diplomats while the international community seeks cooperation from the Taliban on a number of fronts.

“When they accredit the diplomats, then they weaken the influence of the pressure that says you have to allow girls’ education and you have to cooperate with the NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to help feed people or you won’t get recognition,” Neumann said. “So what the Taliban will see is that if they pay no attention to those statements, some states will begin to move toward recognition anyway.”

Accrediting a foreign diplomat is not the same as giving formal recognition, Neumann said. But that’s not how the Taliban see it.

“In practice, this is the equivalent of recognition, but it is not enough,” said Suhail Shaheen, who has been appointed by the Taliban to serve as Afghanistan’s envoy to the U.N. “Countries must recognize the Islamic Emirate.”

Shaheen, whose appointment has not been endorsed by the U.N., told VOA that about 10 countries have “accepted” Taliban diplomats, including China, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan.

Of those, only four — China, Pakistan, Russia and Turkmenistan — have formally accredited diplomats appointed by the Taliban, according to announcements by Afghan embassies and the foreign ministries of the host countries.

But previously appointed diplomats at Afghanistan’s embassies in Iran, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia now follow the Taliban foreign ministry’s “instructions,” Shaheen said.

“We don’t have any problem with anyone who contacts the current government of the Islamic Emirate and follows its instructions,” Shaheen said via WhatsApp. “That’s what they’ve done.”

Abdul Qayyum Sulaimani, the Afghan charge d’affaires in Tehran and a holdover from the previous government, told reporters in January that he’d received a letter from Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister, confirming his status as acting ambassador.

Representatives of the Afghan embassies in Kaula Lumpur and Ryadh could not be reached for comment.

Qatar is a “special case,” Neumann said. The Gulf state has long allowed the Taliban to operate a political office in Doha, and it represents some U.S. diplomatic interests in Afghanistan. In November, Muttaqi met with Afghan embassy staff in Doha.

The Qatar Embassy in Washington did not respond to a question about whether the Qatari government had accredited any Taliban diplomats.

Afghanistan maintains 45 embassies and 20 consulates around the world. The majority are still run by diplomats appointed by the government of former President Ashraf Ghani and have refused to work with the Taliban government.

Mohammad Zahir Aghbar, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan, said Taliban pressure to oust Afghan diplomats won’t work.

“No country will let them do that,” Aghbar told VOA’s Afghan Service.

Tajikistan, which maintains close ties to an anti-Taliban resistance group, is the only Afghanistan neighbor that has refused to allow Taliban officials to visit the Afghan Embassy.

Last week, a senior Taliban foreign ministry official visited an Afghan consulate in neighboring Uzbekistan “to improve and organize the consular affairs of the Afghan consulate” in the border town of Termez, according to a Taliban official.

Last month, Afghanistan’s embassy in Washington and its consulates in New York and Los Angeles shut down after running out of money.

Senior State Department Correspondent Cindy Saine and VOA Afghan Service’s Mirwais Rahmani contributed to this article.
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