France took the rotating presidency of the Council of European Union on January 1, 2022, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine. In the first months of the conflict, Emmanuel Macron tried to negotiate the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and secure the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. All wars are inflationary. The war in Ukraine is no exception, especially as the Russian invader possesses the world’s largest gas reserves. In France, inflation jumped from 1.6% in 2021 to 5.2% in 2022, the year of the invasion, before falling back to 4.9% in 2023. To combat inflation, the ECB tightened its monetary policy. It raised the interest rate on the main refinancing operations for the first time to 0.5% on July 27, 2022. Further increases followed, taking this rate to 4.5% in September 2023. To limit the exponential rise in energy prices, the French government took several measures that cost €85 billion between 2021 and 2023. From February 2022 to February 2024, EU support for Ukraine amounted to over €88 billion.