While receiving France’s highest literary honour, Russian novelist rounds on the ‘arrogant ignoramus’ running the country – who authorised his prize

Russian novelist Andreï Makine has criticised the last three French presidents as “arrogant ignoramuses” and lamented that “once, French presidents not only read novels but knew how to write them”, while receiving France’s highest literary honour.

The Siberian-born novelist made the comments in a speech as he was inducted into the prestigious Académie française.

In the speech, reported by news channel France 24, Makine also slammed western policy in the Middle East as “criminal”, saying politicians were “playing with fire by delivering weapons into the hands of fundamentalists and pushing them into a strategy of chaos in the Middle East”.

The 59-year-old author, who was granted political asylum under President Mitterrand in 1987 and writes in French, added: “Who today would have the impudence to question the martyrdom of so many peoples, Muslim or otherwise, on the altar of the new globalised world order?”

Hours earlier, France’s current president François Hollande had attacked Russia for its failure to safeguard civilians in Aleppo, where Moscow-backed troops have aided Syrian president Bashar al-Assad against rebel fighters. Assad’s forces have been accused of atrocities as they take control of the besieged city.

Makine said the past three presidents had showed “a shameful arrogance with which they admit their lack of culture”. Citing “the force of General de Gaulle’s pen, which like that of Winston Churchill should have earned him a Nobel prize for literature”, he said of the past three French leaders: “They forget, these ignorants in power, that once, French presidents not only read novels but knew how to write them.”

Makine’s use of his induction into the Académie to attack the president has more than a tinge of biting the hand that feeds him, as the French president has final say over who is elected.

France’s leaders were not the only targets of Makine’s ire. Bloodshed in Ukraine was, claimed the author of 19 novels, a direct result of western intervention in the region. East Ukraine’s bloody civil war was, he added, “a fratricidal war orchestrated [in Kiev] by the strategic criminals of Nato and their unthinking European lackeys”.

Although Makine describes himself as pro-Russian, he has refused to say if he is a supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Makine is best known for his 1995 work Le Testament Français, published in the US as Dreams of My Russian Summers. The book received the Prix Goncourt and Prix Médicis, a rare double honour.

In 2011, he was at the centre of an Elena Ferrante-style literary mystery, after he was unmasked as the writer behind Gabriel Osmonde, a pseudonym he adopted for four novels.

Election to the Académie, which is notoriously protective of the French language, is the country’s highest honour. Only 40 living members – known as “Immortals” – are allowed, with new members inducted to a specified seat after the death of the previous incumbent. Makine was elected to seat five in March, following the death of Algerian-born writer Assia Djebar.

Despite the controversy of his remarks, Makine will be highly unlikely to lose his position at the heart of French high culture. It is rare to be dismissed as an Immortal. In the past 100 years, only three have been sacked: Philippe Pétain, Abel Bonnard, Abel Hermant, and Charles Maurras were kicked out for their involvement with the Vichy regime.