PARIS — If anyone thought the coronavirus crisis might prompt Emmanuel Macron to set aside his push to recast the West's relations with Russia, this week proved them wrong.

On Tuesday, NATO announced an expert panel to reflect on its future — at least partly in response to the French president declaring last year that the alliance was experiencing brain death. And Macron's pick was Hubert Védrine, a former foreign minister and self-declared advocate of “a more realistic policy” toward Moscow.

“We must reinvent our relations with Russia without waiting for Trump, who, if he is re-elected, will relaunch a dynamic between the United States and Russia without taking into account the interests of Europe,” Védrine said in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro in August. "The relationship we need must be realistic and prudent, but neighborly," he said in another interview.

Such talk alarms Central and Eastern European governments, who regard Macron's efforts to reach out to Vladimir Putin as both naïve and dangerous. For his part, Macron regularly insists he is under no illusions about Russia and is engaged in a clear-eyed, long-term project to advance Europe’s interests.

French officials cast Védrine as an ideal candidate for the NATO panel because he is both intimately familiar with the North Atlantic alliance but not too close to the U.S.

“The American desire to enlarge NATO to Ukraine was unfortunate, but we must look to the future” — Hubert Védrine, former French foreign minister.

"[Védrine] is known for his independence of thought, and is not known to be a militant Atlanticist. His name was therefore a natural choice because it is precisely about rethinking the missions of the alliance with some perspective, experience and independence,” said an Elysée official, who also touted a 2012 report Védrine authored on the consequences of France's return to NATO's integrated command, the future of the transatlantic relationship and perspectives for European defense.

But Védrine, who is known to be close to Macron, is also one of the main French theorists of so-called "Western sin" toward Russia in the post-Soviet era.

“The West was possessed by such arrogance in the last 30 years, by such hubris in the imposition of its values on the rest of the world,” Védrine told Le Figaro. “During [Putin’s] first two terms, he extended his hand to Westerners, who were wrong not to have really responded.”

That is a position Macron has repeated several times in public

Védrine also seems to at least partially blame the U.S. for the Russian annexation of Crimea. “The American desire to enlarge NATO to Ukraine was unfortunate, but we must look to the future,” he told Le Figaro.

However, some analysts question how this line of thought fits with Védrine's previous position on enlargement. He has supported NATO's eastward expansion in the past and was France's foreign minister when the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO in 1999.

"Hubert Védrine presided over the first post-Cold War NATO enlargement, and, to the best of my knowledge, was never an outspoken critic of it — that is, until Crimea. And he knows that Ukraine could never join NATO without a consensus of existing members, so I find it very strange as an argument," said Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, a Paris think tank.

However, Védrine is also aligned with Macron's broader goal of revamping Europe's security architecture.

“He shares the president’s belief that Europeans need to take on a bigger share of the responsibility of ensuring their security, namely in their close surroundings, which is coherent with the U.S. demands regarding burden-sharing,” said a French official familiar with Macron’s thinking.

Admirers of Védrine say accusing him of being pro-Russian or anti-American misses the point. They see him above all as someone in keeping with a classic French foreign policy tradition that goes back to Presidents Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand.

“Védrine embodies the 'Gaullo-Mitterrandien' heritage — an attachment to French independence as a bridge between great powers — and sees himself as a realist, bent on defending French interests," said Benjamin Haddad, director of the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

"While he supports dialogue with Russia, is critical of sanctions [against Moscow], he’s also supported NATO reassurance to the Baltic states,” Haddad said.