World

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Monday heard first-hand the horrors of abuse committed at church-run residential schools in Canada, as Indigenous delegations pressed him for an apology.

Indigenous, Metis and Inuit survivors are visiting the Vatican this week for meetings with the pope on how to move forward after the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church.

“The Pope listened... [he] heard just three of the many stories we have to share,” Cassidy Caron, president of the Metis National Council, told journalists in front of St Peter’s Square.

The Catholic Church in Canada has apologised “unequivocally” to Canada’s Indigenous peoples for a century of abuses at church-run residential schools.

Francis has also expressed his “pain” at the scandal — but has not gone so far as to offer an apology himself.

“We really truly hoped that... [at] this meeting today, that the Pope would listen... and hopefully bring an apology when he does arrive in Canada,” Caron said after her delegation met the Pope.

According to Canadian bishops, Francis has indicated a willingness to visit Canada, though no date has yet been set.

Caron said the pope had echoed the Metis’ request for “truth, justice and healing”, saying she took that as a sign of “a personal commitment”.

Francis also held a private audience with representatives of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and is due to receive those of the Assembly of First Nations on Thursday, before a final group meeting on Friday.

Martha Greig, a member of the Inuit delegation who attended one of the residential schools, said it would be “really meaningful for him to do an apology”.

“There has to be a point of forgiveness from both parts. If you don’t forgive, you don’t forget,” she told a separate press conference.

Both sides “needed to work hand in hand so that our people can rise from all the hurt that’s been done to them”, she added.

Some 150,000 Indigenous, Metis and Inuit children were enrolled from the late 1800s to the 1990s in 139 of the residential schools across Canada, as part of a government policy of forced assimilation.

They spent months or years isolated from their families, language and culture, and many were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers.

Thousands are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect. More than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered since last May at the schools.

A truth and reconciliation commission concluded in 2015 the failed government policy amounted to “cultural genocide”.

SHANGHAI — Millions of people in China's financial hub were confined to their homes on Monday as the eastern half of Shanghai went into lockdown to curb the country's biggest ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.

The move, announced late Sunday, caused a run on grocery stores by residents who have become exasperated with authorities' inability to snuff out the outbreak despite nearly three weeks of increasingly disruptive measures.

Authorities are imposing a two-phase lockdown of the city of about 25 million people to carry out mass testing.

The government had sought to avoid the hard lockdowns regularly deployed in other Chinese cities, opting instead for rolling localised lockdowns to keep Shanghai's economy running.

But Shanghai has in recent weeks become China's COVID hotspot, and on Monday another record high was reported, with 3,500 new confirmed cases in the city.

The area locked down on Monday is the sprawling eastern district known as Pudong, which includes the main international airport and glittering financial centre.

The lockdown will last until Friday, then switch to the more populated western Puxi section, home to the historic Bund riverfront.

The government said the steps were being taken to root out infections “as soon as possible”.

The unpredictable neighbourhood-level measures employed in recent weeks have left many citizens frustrated with repeated, brief confinements at home.

Some complained Monday that only several hours’ notice was given for the new, larger lockdown.

“We really don’t understand Shanghai’s management and control measures. There has indeed been some inconsistency,” said a 59-year-old man who gave only his surname Cao as he queued to buy groceries.

“After so much time, [the city] is not controlling the virus and the numbers are still going up.”

The government has not specified any impact on Shanghai’s main international airport or its bustling seaport.

‘Not optimistic’ 

China largely kept the virus under control for the past two years through strict zero-tolerance measures including mass lockdowns of cities and provinces for even small numbers of cases.

But Omicron has proven harder to stamp out.

China has reported several thousand new daily cases for the past two weeks.

Those numbers remain insignificant globally but are up sharply from fewer than 100 a day in February.

Tens of millions of residents in affected areas across China have been subjected to citywide lockdowns in response.

But as Shanghai has struggled, some cities have made progress.

The southern tech manufacturing hub Shenzhen, which locked down earlier in the current outbreak, announced that normal business activity was resuming on Monday as new cases have dropped.

“I didn’t think it will be so serious [in Shanghai],” said resident Guo Yunlong, 24.

“Every single detailed aspect of our lives from clothing, food, living and commuting has been affected. I don’t feel optimistic, to be honest.”

Some online posts complained of the impact on elderly Shanghai residents who may not know how to order supplies online.

Other users accused Shanghai, which is envied by other cities for its wealth and cosmopolitan image, of putting its desire to maintain normality over health concerns.

Chinese authorities have watched nervously as a deadly Hong Kong Omicron surge sparked panic buying and claimed a high toll of unvaccinated elderly before later surging in mainland China.

KYIV — Ukraine warned on Monday the humanitarian crisis in the pulverised city of Mariupol was now "catastrophic", as fighting surged around Kyiv ahead of new face-to-face peace talks with Russia in Turkey.

Russian attacks near Kyiv cut power to more than 80,000 homes, officials said, underscoring the peril facing the capital despite an apparent retreat in Moscow's war aims to focus on eastern Ukraine.

"The enemy is trying to break through the corridor around Kyiv and block transport routes," Ukraine's deputy defence minister Ganna Malyar said.

"The defence of Kyiv continues. It is very serious today," she said.

"It is extremely difficult for the enemy, but we must be honest about the fact that the enemy is trying to capture Kyiv, because to capture Kyiv is essentially a captured Ukraine, and this is their goal."

About 20,000 Ukrainians have been killed in Russia's month-old invasion and 10 million have fled their homes, according to Kyiv, and several cities are still coming under withering bombardment.

Humanitarian needs are direst in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Ukraine said that about 160,000 civilians remain encircled by Russian forces, desperate for food, water and medicine.

Ukraine's foreign ministry said the situation there was "catastrophic" and Russia's assault from land, sea and air had turned a city once home to 450,000 people "into dust".

Ukraine says that one Russian strike on a theatre-turned-shelter in Mariupol is feared to have killed some 300 people.

Local lawmaker Kateryna Sukhomlynova said the theatre death toll remained unknown because of poor communications, but witnessed terrible scenes in the city before she was able to escape west.

Unburied bodies line streets and residents cowering in basement shelters have been forced to eat snow to stay hydrated, she told AFP.

“People were calling out to me hysterically, asking me ‘Why aren’t we burying them?’ And I responded, ‘If I take care of the dead, the living that I can help will die’,” Sukhomlynova said.

Ukraine decided against any humanitarian corridors on Monday because of potential “provocations” by the Russians along designated routes, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

France, Greece and Turkey are hoping to launch a mass evacuation of civilians out of Mariupol within days, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking agreement from Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Macron warned that any escalation “in words or action” could harm his evacuation efforts, after US President Joe Biden’s shock declaration in Poland that Putin “cannot remain in power”.

Biden himself rowed back on Sunday, denying to reporters that he had been calling for regime change, while Britain and Germany have joined France in distancing themselves from the remark.

Peace ‘without delay’ 

Russia has de-facto control over the southern peninsula of Crimea that it annexed in 2014, and the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the eastern Donbas region.

In the Lugansk city of Rubizhne, one person was killed and another wounded by overnight Russian bombardment, according to regional Ukrainian officials.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the first round of in-person talks since March 10, due to open in Istanbul on Tuesday after near-daily video contacts, must bring peace “without delay”.

Ukrainian “neutrality”, and the future status of Donbas, could be in the mix for the Istanbul meeting. Ukraine’s delegation said it had been delayed and the talks would open on Tuesday.

“We understand that it is impossible to liberate all territory by force, that would mean World War III, I fully understand and realise that,” Zelensky said.

But he stressed: “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are beyond doubt. Effective security guarantees for our state are mandatory.”

Putin has called Moscow’s military goals “demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine”, as well as the imposition of neutral status.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov named the primary goal as “ending the killing in the Donbas region that has lasted eight years”.

He rejected Zelensky’s demands to meet personally with Putin, but said: “We have an interest in these talks ending with a result that will achieve the fundamental aims for us.”

Russia last week appeared to scale back its campaign when senior Gen. Sergei Rudskoi said the first phase of the war was over and the “main goal” was now on controlling Donbas in the east.

Western analysts say Ukraine’s unexpectedly dogged resistance, coupled with logistical and tactical failures by the Russians, explain any reorientation by Moscow.

The Kremlin is taking no chances with domestic opposition to its war. A crackdown on independent reporting ensnared another victim on Monday after new warnings from Russia’s media regulator.

The Novaya Gazeta newspaper, whose chief editor Dmitry Muratov was last year awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said it was suspending publication until the end of the invasion.

Many foreign companies are giving up on Russia altogether, after a raft of Western sanctions. European brewers Carlsberg and Heineken joined the exodus on Monday.

Russia’s Korea solution? 

Many in Ukraine remain suspicious that Russia could use the talks as an opportunity to regroup and fix the problems bedevilling its military.

“After a failure to capture Kyiv and remove Ukraine’s government, Putin is changing his main operational directions,” intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said.

He was aiming now “impose a separation line between the occupied and unoccupied regions”, the Ukrainian official said. “It will be an attempt to set up South and North Koreas in Ukraine.”

The head of Ukraine’s Lugansk separatist region says it may hold a referendum on becoming part of Russia.

But resistance in besieged Mariupol is the main obstacle preventing Moscow from gaining unbroken control of land from the Donbas to the Crimea.

In the southern town of Mykolaiv, under heavy assault for weeks, the bombardments appeared to be easing.

That was a welcome respite for locals like 13-year-old Sofia, who suffered shrapnel injuries to her head during shelling in early March near Mykolaiv.

“Now I can move my arms and legs a little,” she said, after undergoing three operations. “I still can’t get up without my mother’s help, but hopefully I can leave soon.”

KABUL — The Taliban have ordered airlines in Afghanistan to stop women from flying unless accompanied by a male relative, in the latest crackdown on basic human rights by the country’s new rulers since seizing power.

The hardline Islamists have imposed sweeping restrictions on freedoms, mostly targeting Afghan girls and women, and on Sunday also ordered local television channels to stop broadcasting BBC news bulletins.

Over the weekend, they also decreed that men and women could not visit parks in the capital on the same days.

After returning to power in August the Taliban promised a softer version of the harsh rule that characterised their first stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, but restrictions have crept back — often implemented regionally at the whim of local officials.

Women are increasingly being shut out of public life — barred from high schools and most government jobs, and ordered to dress according to the Taliban’s strict interpretation of the Koran.

In their latest crackdown, the Taliban ordered Afghanistan’s Ariana Afghan Airlines and Kam Air to stop women from boarding flights unless they were escorted by a “mahram”, or adult male relative.

The decision was taken after a meeting on Thursday between representatives of the Taliban, the two airlines, and Kabul airport immigration authorities, aviation officials told AFP.

“No women are allowed to fly on any domestic or international flights without a male relative,” said a letter by a senior Ariana official to his staff, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

A spokesman for the Taliban’s religious enforcers, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, denied ordering the flight ban, but two travel agents told AFP they had stopped issuing tickets to solo women travellers.

‘God’s order’

The edict was not expected to affect foreigners, although aviation officials reported that an Afghan woman with a US passport was prevented from flying last week.

“Some women who were travelling without a male relative were not allowed to board a Kam Air flight from Kabul to Islamabad on Friday,” a passenger on the flight told AFP.

The Taliban have already banned inter-city road trips for women travelling alone.

The flight ban came as the vice ministry ordered that men and women should not visit parks in Kabul on the same days.

Women are now permitted to visit parks only on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, while the remaining days are reserved for men, a ministry notification said.

“It is not the Islamic Emirate’s order but our God’s order that men and women who are strangers to each other should not gather at one place,” Mohammad Yahya Aref, an official at the vice ministry, told AFP.

The new restriction on women follows Wednesday’s shutdown of all girls’ secondary schools just hours after they were allowed to reopen for the first time since August.

Tens of thousands of girls had flocked back to class, but officials ordered them home just hours into the day, triggering international outrage.

Taliban sources said that the decision was taken after a closed-door meeting of the movement’s leaders last week in Kandahar, the de facto power centre of the group.

‘Screws tightening’

Several Afghan women activists have warned of nationwide protests if the schools were not open within a week.

Heather Barr, Human Rights Watch associate director for women’s rights, said the latest restrictions were “scary”.

“We see the screws tightening on women and girls every day now,” she said.

“They have abandoned — at least for now — any effort to reach an accommodation with the international community, and that leaves them with nothing to lose.”

The Taliban appear to have also set their sights on local media networks, which flourished under the previous US-backed regimes.

On Monday, Taliban intelligence agents raided four radio stations in Kandahar and detained six journalists, sources said. 

The raids come a day after the authorities ordered the BBC’s television partners in Afghanistan to stop broadcasting its news bulletins.

“Since the foreign TV channels are broadcast from abroad, the Islamic Emirate has no access to control their contents, especially when it comes to journalists’ uniforms and dresses,” government spokesman Inamullah Samangani told AFP.

The Taliban have already ordered women journalists working in Afghan television networks to wear hijabs, and stopped channels from broadcasting foreign dramas.

KYIV — Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are to sit down for a fresh round of talks next week in an attempt to end the war in Ukraine that the UN estimates has killed at least 1,100 civilians and sent more than 3.8 million fleeing to other countries.

Kyiv said the negotiations would start on Monday in Turkey, while Russia's lead negotiator said they would begin on Tuesday without confirming the location.

The prospect of fresh talks comes after the Russian army said last week that it would focus on eastern Ukraine, which some interpreted as a scaling back of Russian objections, although US President Joe Biden cast doubt on a strategy change.

France's President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday warned against an escalation "in words and action", after Biden on Saturday branded Russian President Vladimir Putin a "butcher" who "cannot remain in power".

The Kremlin reacted in fury to Biden's comments, saying it narrowed the window for bilateral relations, with the West and Moscow already at loggerheads over crushing sanctions imposed against Russia for invading Ukraine on February 24.

Rounds of diplomatic efforts and the sanctions have so far failed to get Putin to halt his war, despite the Russians appearing to run into tactical and logistical problems.

Ukraine's intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said Putin might be considering a Korean scenario, by seeking to "impose a separation line between the occupied and unoccupied regions of our country".

“After a failure to capture Kyiv and remove Ukraine’s government, Putin is changing his main operational directions. These are south and east,” he wrote on Facebook.

“In fact, it will be an attempt to set up South and North Koreas in Ukraine,” Budanov added.

Russia may try to establish a quasi-state of occupied zones with its own currency, he assessed, but he vowed that Ukrainian counter-offensive will foil those plans.

Korean scenario 

Russia has de facto control over the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the country’s eastern Donbas region.

The head of Ukraine’s Lugansk separatist region said it may hold a referendum on becoming part of Russia — a move immediately slammed by Kyiv.

Russian troops have also been besieging Mariupol as taking the strategic port city would give Moscow an unbroken control stretching from the Donbas to the Crimea Peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.

Mariupol residents have recounted harrowing scenes of destruction and death.

Ukraine was making a new push to get civilians out of the city on Sunday, with an aid route agreement for people to leave by cars or on evacuation buses, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

Several attempts at establishing safe routes for the 170,000 civilians trapped in the city to flee have collapsed as both sides trade blame for violating temporary ceasefires.

Macron said he would speak to Putin in the next two days to organise the evacuation.

The French leader said he saw his task as “achieving first a ceasefire and then the total withdrawal of [Russian] troops by diplomatic means”.

“If we want to do that, we can’t escalate either in words or actions,” he told broadcaster France 3, moving to dial down Biden’s blunt words against Putin.

Putin sent troops into Ukraine, vowing in late February to destroy the country’s military and topple pro-Western President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Counterattacks 

Some had expected his troops to sweep across Ukraine undeterred.

But his army has made little progress on capturing key cities, and it has hit hospitals, residential buildings and schools in increasingly deadly attacks on civilians.

Armed with Western-supplied weapons, Ukraine’s fighters continue to hold back Russia’s far-bigger military on the frontlines, and some units are beginning to snatch back control.

At the southern town of Mykolaiv, which had come under heavy Russian assaults for weeks, the bombardments appeared to be easing.

Sofia, who was hit in the head by shrapnel during shelling on March 5 in a village near Mykolaiv, hopes to soon be able to leave hospital, which moved several of its units underground amid the strikes.

“Now I can move my arms and legs a little, I still can’t get up without my mother’s help, but hopefully I can leave soon,” she told AFP.

The frontlines appeared to have receded from Mykolaiv, with a counter-offensive being mounted now in Kherson, about 80 kilometres to the south-east.

Two people were killed by shelling at a village near Kherson, which has so far been the only significant city that the Russian army has claimed to have seized.

In Kherson itself, around 500 people shouted “Kherson, that’s Ukraine” at new anti-Russian demonstrations on Sunday.

Kyrylo, a paramedic who spoke with AFP by telephone, sai

the peaceful rally was “dispersed twice” with tear gas and stun grenades.

The Ukrainian defence ministry said its forces had also recaptured Trostianets, a town near the Russian border that was one of the first to fall under Moscow’s control.

Images published by the ministry showed Ukrainian soldiers and civilians among heavily damaged buildings and what appeared to be abandoned Russian military equipment.

On the eastern outskirts of Kharkiv, a Holocaust memorial at Drobytskyi Yar commemorating 15,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis in World War II was damaged by Russan shelling.

Bombardments continued in Irpin, as well as other areas around Kyiv, said Ukrainian authorities.

Tamara Osypchuk, 72, told AFP she wrote poetry to calm herself in her Irpin apartment when the bombs rained down.

“The explosions were very strong. Like a volcano is exploding, as if the earth explodes,” she said as she rested on a chair at an evacuation centre on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Away from the battlefields, Ukrainian leaders pushed the fight on the economic front, with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba calling for a boycott of French retailer Auchan.

“If Auchan ignores 139 Ukrainian children murdered during this month of Russian invasion, let us ignore Auchan and all their products,” he wrote on Twitter.

Household names from McDonalds’ to Volkswagen to Coca-Cola have left Russia in droves as unprecedented Western sanctions were imposed on Putin’s country in a bid to stop his war in Ukraine.

The sanctions which personally target Putin, Russian government officials and oligarchs, will “cut in half” the Russian economy in the coming years, Biden said on Saturday.

BERLIN — Just over 100 days after taking power, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democrats cleared their first electoral test, with a thumping win on Sunday in regional polls in the small state of Saarland, exit polls showed.

The centre-left party was on course to grab 43-44 per cent of the vote, snatching top spot from former chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU Party, which is set for a record low of 27 per cent, separate estimates published by broadcasters ARD and ZDF showed.

The upset leaves the conservatives, which had controlled the state since 1999, deep in the doldrums while lending momentum to the SPD ahead of similar regional polls this year, including that of Germany's biggest state North Rhine-Westphalia in May.

Largely written off just months before his own election, Scholz came from behind to replace Merkel, who was retiring, in a major upset in September that breathed new life into his party.

SPD General Secretary Kevin Kuehnert called Sunday's win a "landslide" which gives the party "incredible tailwind" as it looks ahead to three other regional elections in the coming months.

At the last Saarland election in 2017, the CDU came out on top and has since been governing regionally in a power-sharing coalition with the SPD.

The SPD's strong vote share on Sunday leaves smaller parties like the ecologist Greens or the far-right AfD with just barely the required vote share to cross the 5 per cent threshold into parliament.

Latest national surveys had actually show support for the SPD dipping, as Scholz faces criticism for failing to take a more assertive stance against Russia's invasion of Ukraine or in handling the coronavirus pandemic.

In Saarland itself however, his SPD is benefitting from voters' reluctance to rock the boat against the backdrop of the conflict.

“Everything that is said and done at the moment is influenced by the war. It’s not the right time to put up opposition,” said CDU lawmaker Thorsten Frei.

The CDU and the SPD had governed in a coalition with the conservatives leading. But this time, the SPD may well be able to go it alone.

The Social Democrats’ regional candidate, Anke Rehlinger, 45, a lawyer who holds the state shotput record is now in pole position to take over as state premier.

Rehlinger, currently in charge of Saarland’s economy, had won over locals with her action for victims of de-industrialisation.

Her rival, the incumbent state premier Tobias Hans, 44, had struggled to hang on to support, accused of a wavering stance during the pandemic.

Hans was installed in 2018 to succeed former regional chief Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, then tapped as CDU national leader and a possible successor to Merkel.

After crashing in national elections to the SPD, the CDU has named Friedrich Merz, a former Merkel nemesis, as its new chief.

Merz cancelled his participation at a rally for Hans on Thursday, sparking speculation he had already concluded the election was lost.

“We get the impression that the CDU is trying to build a firewall to block out Saarland, to not bear the brunt in the impending defeat,” said Spiegel weekly.

“In the end, the results always come back on the federal parties — no matter how strong the firewall that has been erected may be,” it warned.

The CDU, it noted, was struggling to pick up momentum.

It will have to shift gears to stand any chance in the next elections of the year, which besides that of the most populous state NRW, will also include Schleswig-Holstein in May and Lower Saxony in October.

KABUL — Women's rights activists pledged on Sunday to launch a wave of protests across Afghanistan if the Taliban fail to reopen girls' secondary schools within a week.

Thousands of secondary school girls had flocked to classes on Wednesday after the hardline Islamists reopened their institutions for the first time since seizing power last August.

But officials ordered the schools shut again just hours into the day, triggering international outrage.

“We call on the leaders of the Islamic Emirate to open girls’ schools within one week,” activist Halima Nasari read from a statement issued by four women’s rights groups at a press conference in Kabul.

“If the girls’ schools remain closed even after one week, we will open them ourselves and stage demonstrations throughout the country until our demands are met.”

The Taliban should be building more schools for girls in rural areas rather than shutting existing facilities, said the statement, which comes after several women’s activists were detained in recent months.

“The people can no longer tolerate such oppression. We do not accept any excuse from the authorities,” it said.

On Saturday, about two dozen schoolgirls and women staged a protest in Kabul demanding the reopening of the schools.

“Women, teachers and girls should come out on the streets and protest,” said student Zarghuna Ibrahimi, 16, who attended the press conference.

“The international community should support us.”

The education ministry has so far not given a clear reason for its policy reversal, but senior Taliban leader Suhail Shaheel told AFP that some “practical issues” were still to be resolved before reopening the schools.

Separate days at parks 

Since storming back to power the Taliban have rolled back two decades of gains made by Afghanistan’s women, who have been squeezed out of many government jobs, barred from travelling alone, and ordered to dress according to a strict interpretation of the Koran.

The Taliban had promised a softer version of the harsh Islamist rule that characterised their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001.

But many restrictions have still crept back, often implemented locally at the whim of regional officials.

Some Afghan women initially resisted the curbs, holding small protests where they demanded the right to education and work.

But the Taliban soon rounded up the ringleaders, holding them incommunicado while denying that they had been detained.

Since their release, most have gone silent.

On Sunday, the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ordered that men and women should not visit parks in Kabul on the same days.

Women are now permitted to visit parks on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, while the remaining days were reserved for men, a ministry notification said.

“It is not the Islamic Emirate’s order but our God’s order that men and women who are strangers to each other should not gather at one place,” Mohammad Yahya Aref, an official at the ministry, told AFP.

“This way women will be able to enjoy their time and freedom. No man will be there to trouble them,” he said, adding that religious police were already implementing the order.

PARIS — Candidates in France’s looming presidential election pushed at the weekend to make themselves heard over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with a rerun of 2017’s final showdown still the most likely outcome.

Buoyed in part by his shuttle diplomacy ahead of the conflict and toughness on Moscow since the tanks began to roll, liberal incumbent Emmanuel Macron is riding high in the polls with two weeks to go.

But as the president “is totally absorbed by the international crisis, it’s very difficult to be present and to campaign”, a source close to him told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Short of a major upset, his opponent in the runoff will be far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen — exactly the same setup as five years ago.

A trio of candidates — far-right rival Eric Zemmour, conservative Valerie Pecresse and left-winger Jean-Luc Melenchon — still hope they can break out from the pack and take on Macron in the second round.

“Everything could be decided in the two weeks to come, they could count double,” Adelaide Zulfikarpasic of the BVA Opinion polling group told AFP.

“Four out of ten voters who say they are certain to cast their ballot are still undecided” on a candidate, she said.

Brawl on the right 

On Sunday, Zemmour hopes to rally up to 50,000 people a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, bussing in supporters from other parts of France.

“This will be the event of the campaign, the biggest gathering,” the candidate told Sud Radio on Friday, insisting that “since the beginning, my meetings have touched off the greatest excitement”.

Yet, Zemmour, a former columnist and TV commentator, has fallen below the 10 per cent mark in some polls.

That is far short of support ranging around 20 per cent for Le Pen and close to 30 per cent for Macron.

The National Rally leader strove to project serenity as members of her own camp — including her niece Marion Marechal — deserted her for tougher-talking Zemmour.

Instead Le Pen has pounded the pavements campaigning on French streets and market squares, and this week urged potential Zemmour voters to back her if she reaches the second round as forecast.

“No one owns their voters,” she told M6 television, adding that “I hope if I’m in the second round they’ll join us”.

With Zemmour and Le Pen slogging it out for the hard-right vote and Macron sounding pro-business and law-and-order notes, conservative Valerie Pecresse has struggled to make herself heard.

Her woes deepened Thursday when she announced that a positive COVID-19 test would keep her from planned campaign stops in western France and the southeast.

Divided left 

Also Sunday, the leading left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon — polling at 12 to 15 per cent — was rallying supporters in the Mediterranean port city Marseille.

Former banker Macron’s presidency has been dogged by left-wing resistance, including on law and order and economic issues, peaking with the “Yellow Vests” demonstrations in 2018 and 19.

But a political left divided among a slew of competing candidacies has yet to make a real mark on this year’s election.

“Don’t hide behind the differences between the leaders, you’re the ones who will make the decision, don’t shirk it,” Melenchon said at a Paris meeting a week before.

His hopes of making the second round could be thwarted by others still hoping for a miracle, including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo — polling around just two percent for the once-mighty Socialist Party — Communist candidate Fabien Roussel and Greens boss Yannick Jadot.

The woes of Pecresse and Hidalgo, candidates of the traditional bastions of left and right that dominated the political scene just a few years ago, illustrate the longer-term factors beyond the Ukraine conflict that have scrambled French politics.

“The systematic voter who voted out of duty, the voter who was loyal and faithful to political parties or to candidates... no longer exists,” said Anne Muxel, research director at Paris’ Centre for Political Research (Cevipof).

“Voters have a much more independent, individualised relationship to politics and to their electoral choices, they’re much more mobile, more volatile” — especially given that “the majority of French people don’t feel represented by political office-holders”.