CEO Patrick Pouyanné of TotalEnergies, France’s enormous energy company, lectured the French Senate, in testimony last week, that the world is much different from what Western propaganda would have one believe. He explained that, soon after the war in Ukraine broke out, he went to India and Southwest Asia. He was “very struck by the reaction” of the people he met. He said that they were asking him, “What the hell have you—Europeans—done to find yourselves in such a mess?”
He explained: “I realized then that the vision we—in the West—have of this conflict wasn’t shared at all by the immense majority of the rest of the world. They look at us as if we’re co-responsible for it and didn’t do things right….” Further: “They were also very surprised by our attitude when we unilaterally imposed sanctions and only afterwards went to the UN to check if that was okay….”