Bonjour and welcome to this Wednesday’s edition of Global Insider! I’m Clea Caulcutt, POLITICO’s senior France correspondent, bringing you the latest global news from Paris.

There’s a war raging on the edges of the European continent, climate change is causing damage and upheaval across the globe, but there are some things that do not change. The French are on strike — again. For the past couple of weeks, French trade unions have been staging almost weekly protests and strikes over government plans to push back the age of retirement.

Why does this matter for Europe? President Emmanuel Macron’s second presidential mandate is on line. If he fails to push through his big-ticket pensions reform, he’ll lose the credibility he needs to project his views across Europe. And let’s be honest, there aren’t that many EU leaders with big ideas at the moment.

DIPLOMATIC ACTIVITY

ONE YEAR ON. On Friday, the world will mark exactly one year since the day Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In the runup to the anniversary, there’s a flurry of diplomatic activity both in Russia and the West.

CHINA COMING. China’s chief diplomat Wang Yi met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow today, in the first visit by a top Chinese official since Russia’s invasion began.

WEAPONS? The visit to Moscow comes just as U.S. officials aired concerns China was providing non-lethal military assistance to Russia and that it was considering sending lethal aid.

MEANWHILE IN POLAND. U.S. President Joe Biden is to meet the NATO leaders of Eastern Europe today, which includes some of the strongest supporters of military aid to Ukraine.

RESOLVE. Biden’s visit to Poland comes on the heels of his first visit to Kyiv since the war began. On Tuesday, the U.S. president pledged a new military package of $500 million, and a new round of measures to be announced against companies trying to avoid sanctions.

NOW READ THIS. It’s food for thought that Biden is visiting Poland after he popped up in Kyiv. For nearly two decades, Poland sat exactly where Ukraine now does, on the front line between liberalism and autocracy, writes POLITICO’s Matt Kaminski. Europe now needs to decide how hard it is going to fight to keep Ukraine in its sphere.

FEEDING THE WORLD

FROM FORK TO FIGHT. Ukraine and Russia are engaged in a war of words over who is feeding the world ahead of talks on extending a U.N.-brokered deal to get grain out of Ukraine. The Black Sea Grain Initiative is up for renewal on March 19, and has so far permitted the export of millions of cereals, via a safe passage to Ukraine’s southern ports.

SHIPPING WOES. Russia accuses Ukraine of shipping its grain mainly to Europe and other rich countries. Western countries dismiss this idea and say Russia has been trying to slow cereal exports down. On Tuesday, Biden accused Russia’s Vladimir Putin of blocking the ports in the Black Sea and trying to “starve the world.”

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT. The number of people facing food insecurity rose from 282 million at the end of 2021 to a record 345 million last year, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). More than 50 million people are on the brink of famine. Read more from our colleaguesSusannah Savage, Meredith Lee Hill and Sarah Anne Aarup.

NO MORE PARIS-KYIV LOVE-IN?

ON THE KYIV EXPRESS. On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Ambassador to France Vadym Omelchenko told French radio that the authorities in Kyiv were hoping for a visit from French PresidentEmmanuel Macron soon, possibly in March. However, it appears the French president isn’t keen on hopping on the Kyiv express just for a photo op in the bombed capital. In other words, he doesn’t want to turn up empty-handed.

JETS, JETS, JETS. According to a senior French diplomat, the Ukrainians are “putting the pressure” on France to donate fighter jets to Ukraine. The French are pushing back, said the diplomat who wanted to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of the issue, due to questions over whether Ukrainians can be trained in a timely fashion and whether jets are really what Ukraine needs.

MEANWHILE. The relations between the French president and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appear once more to be strained. Zelenskyy slammed Macron this week for “wasting his time” in trying to talk to Putin, a couple of days after the French president said Russia “should be defeated” but not “crushed.” Previously, Macron had angered officials in Kyiv when he called for Russia “not to be humiliated” and said Moscow should be given “security guarantees” under any future peace deal.

MOOD MUSIC. It’s back to square one. Relations between the two leaders had improved in recent months, after the French appeared to have thrown their weight completely behind Kyiv, with Macron pledging that they would support Ukraine “until victory.” In January, Paris was also the first to announce it was sending “light tanks” to Ukraine, de facto lifting the taboo over sending battle tanks, which paved the way for Germany to send its coveted Leopard 2 tanks. (Real military nerds will say French light tanks aren’t really tanks, just big armored vehicles … we’ll let you make up your mind).

BREXIT WATCH. Members of parliament in the U.K. could get a chance to vote on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s deal with the EU on post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland, the British leader said today. Sunak hopes to keep his Conservative Party MPs (many of them arch-Brexiteers) and the Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party onside with his efforts to reform the contentious Northern Ireland protocol. The PM has tasked six men to lobby on his behalf: Here’s who they are.

Yes, but. “Of course parliament will express its view,” Sunak said during the weekly prime minister’s questions joust in parliament. But his spokesperson later declined to get into “hypotheticals,” since a deal hasn’t been agreed yet. The U.K.’s political circles are now on resignation watch, as the Cabinet includes several ministers who have a track record of resigning over Brexit, our U.K. team reports.

A helping hand. Cheekily, the opposition Labour Party is offering the government its votes to help a deal through parliament. A deal looks increasingly unlikely to come before the weekend.

Recap: The Northern Ireland protocol keeps the region — part of the U.K. — aligned with the EU in key areas in a bid to avoid a hard border at the politically sensitive frontier with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member. But the U.K. government and unionists in Northern Ireland, argue the setup creates unacceptable barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The DUP is boycotting power-sharing in the region until its demands for change are met.

WATER PLEASE. “France is in a state of alert,” said the country’s Ecology Minister Christophe Bechu today after France went 32 days without rain in the middle of winter. According to the French weather institution, the situation is “unforeseen” since weather records started.

Anticipation. France is going to hold its first government meeting this Thursday to anticipate water shortages later in the year. Bechu warned France had to come out of “its denial” when it comes to available water resources as climate change hits the European continent.

KLEPTOWATCH

QATARGATE LATEST. In December, the Belgian police recovered about €‎1.5 million in a sting that exposed an alleged bribery ring at the European Parliament – the so-called Qatargate scandal. However it appears the initial raid may just be the tip in the cash-filled iceberg, writes Nektaria Stamouli. 

Money money money. According to an arrest warrant obtained by POLITICO, “several million euros” were handed to the main suspects involved. The “considerable sums of money,” adds the warrant for Eva Kaili, the most senior EU lawmaker who has been ensnared in the scandal, were “paid secretly, in cash by Morocco and Qatar.”

MOVES

— China has named Qian Bo as special envoy to the Pacific islands. Qian steps down as the Chinese ambassador to Fiji.

— Professor Angela McLean has been appointed the U.K.’s new chief scientific adviser and will replace Patrick Vallance.

— Former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa James Joseph died this weekend.

U.S. makes overtures in Africa to get rid of Wagner, on French daily Le Monde, which says Washington has offered the Central African Republic a deal, including humanitarian aid, if it stops its cooperation with the Wagner mercenary group (article in English).

UK slams ‘protectionist’ Biden, on POLITICO. Britain’s trade chief Kemi Badenoch warns the Inflation Reduction Act won't help the U.S. counter the rise of China and could create a "single point of failure" in key supply chains.

How Monopoly became America’s cruellest board game, on the New Yorker.

Thanks to editor Sanya Khetani-Shah and producer Sophie Gardner

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