Emmanuel Macron

The outspoken 44-year-old centrist, with his non-stop diplomatic activism, doesn’t always get his way but has earned his place on the international scene. He is expected to pivot back to his work on Ukraine.

Macron also thanked people who voted for him not because they embrace his ideas but because they wanted to reject far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

No matter the outcome, the election will have profound consequences well beyond France at a time when the United States and its European allies are locked in a precarious standoff with Russia over its war in Ukraine.

The snap survey by Elabe for BFM TV found that 59% of polled viewers found Macron more convincing than Le Pen. In 2017, the same polling firm found that 63% of those surveyed found Macron more convincing.

Some polls are predicting a lead of around 10 points for Macron over Le Pen in the run-off, a repeat of the 2017 election. But undecided voters and abstentions could yet swing the figures

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen came out on top in Sunday’s first-round vote, setting up a repeat of the 2017 duel pitting a pro-European economic liberal against a euro-sceptic nationalist.

Macron, now 44, emerged ahead from Sunday’s first round, but the runoff is essentially a new election and the next two weeks of campaigning to the April 24 second-round vote promise to be bruising and confrontational against his 53-year-old political nemesis.

The election Sunday is expected to push Macron and Le Pen through to a second round on April 24, where each would look to build a broader coalition of voters in a one-on-one standoff.

An early belief the vote would be a repeat of 2017, when Macron faced Le Pen and easily won, was overturned by the candidacy of far-right media pundit Eric Zemmour in November and the conservative Republicains party’s first ever female presidential contender, Valerie Pecresse, in December, both of whom initially shot up in polls.

In an impassioned speech from the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Biden blasted Putin over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

They reached “no agreement,” the statement said, but Macron “remains convinced of the need to continue his efforts” and he “stands alongside Ukraine.”

U.S. President Joe Biden and France’s Emmanuel Macron underscored in a call on Sunday their commitment to holding Russia accountable for the invasion of Ukraine, the White House said in a statement.

The call, which a presidential official said lasted 1 hour 45 minutes and was at Macron's request, was the fourth time they had spoken since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

After the fall of a first major Ukrainian city to Russian forces, Putin appeared in no mood to heed a global clamour for hostilities to end as the war entered its second week.

Macron will again push for extra sanctions on Russia to increase the cost of the invasion, the aide said while denying any open tensions between the two men.

The now-famous table had first appeared in a photo of a meeting last week between Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on the Ukraine crisis.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to travel on Tuesday to Moscow to meet Putin, hot on the heels of his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, as part of a whirlwind of diplomatic meetings aiming to prevent a fresh Russian attack on Ukraine.

The two spoke for one hour 40 minutes, the French presidency said, amid a flurry of diplomacy aimed at dissuading Putin from marching into his western neighbour.

French President Emmanuel Macron was made to sit at an enormously long table for his talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Moscow because he refused to take a Kremlin-performed Covid test.

Vladimir Putin said the first Moscow summit he has held with a Western leader since the Kremlin began massing troops near its neighbor had been substantive, but also repeated warnings about the threat of war were Ukraine to join NATO.