François Hollande’s surprise visit with Vladimir Putin during a brief stopover at a Moscow airport on his way back to Paris after a trip to Kazakhstan is in the news. Taken aback, I went to the World Wide Web to learn more about the meeting. “Mister president,” Hollande told Putin via an interpreter, “I decided we should discuss problems regarding the Ukraine crisis.” Putin said he was confident Hollande’s impromptu visit could help secure progress in the crisis. When I read this, I raised my eyebrows. “I think we can do this,” the French president said. During his trip to Kazakhstan, he said that he, Putin, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, and German chancellor Angela Merkel should “start the process of reducing tension” in Ukraine together. Having read the last bit, I almost burst into laughter. Hollande’s visit was finally clear to me. All he actually wants is to make sure that France is not sidelined by Germany in European affairs. Thus his little trick. In the short run, he may be of some value to Putin. In a bit longer run, he is pretty irrelevant in the current crisis. Or any other, for that matter. And so is France, it goes without saying.