PARIS — Greenpeace activists staged a bold protest on Monday by removing a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron from the Grévin Museum and transporting it to the Russian Embassy in Paris. The demonstration aimed to criticize France’s continued energy and business ties with Russia amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
In a statement, Greenpeace France said the action symbolized a call for Macron to sever economic relations with Moscow and to advocate for a stronger ecological transition at the European level. The group declared that the president does not deserve a place in the world-renowned wax museum while maintaining contracts with Russia.
“Ukraine burns, business goes on,” read a placard held by the activists beside the wax figure, highlighting what the organization sees as a contradiction between Macron’s public condemnation of Russia and France’s sustained importation of Russian gas and fertilizers.
Despite widespread European efforts to reduce dependence on Russian energy following the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, France continues to import significant quantities of liquified natural gas from Russia. The European Commission has pledged to eliminate Russian gas imports by 2027, but France remains one of the bloc’s largest importers, according to data from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
The French news agency AFP reported that the three suspects — two women and one man — posed as museum visitors to carry out the removal. The Paris prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into what it described as “theft to the detriment of the museum.”
While Greenpeace referred to the act as a “borrowing” of the statue, it remains unclear if or when the figure will be returned.
The statue of Russian President Vladimir Putin, formerly housed in the same museum, was removed in 2022 following Russia’s military escalation in Ukraine.
