On the background of the riots on the Champs Elysees and sharp criticism from the opposition, the President of France Emmanuel Macron on Saturday evening cut short his vacation in the French Pyrenees and back to Paris. He promised to take “drastic measures” so that pogroms like those staged by demonstrators in yellow vests on the main Paris Avenue, will not be repeated.

“Today we saw people who want to destroy the Republic by all means”, said Emmanuel Macron, who arrived at the crisis center of the interior Ministry. The President acknowledged that the new measures taken to protect law and order since November last year are insufficient. He stressed that “everyone who was there (at the action of “yellow vests” on the Champs Elysees) became accomplices” of pogroms and riots. Macron has promised additional “strong measures” to like “never again”.

Another, the eighteenth in a row action of “yellow vests” resulted in riots and clashes with the police on the Champs Elysees. In the French capital, 237 people were detained, about two hundred of them were placed in custody. According to police estimates, a total of about ten thousand people took part in the Paris action, across the country — more than 32 thousand.

On the Champs Elysees protesters broke the Windows of dozens of shops, some of them looted, and also staged a pogrom in the famous Brasserie Le Fouquet’s. During the “clean-up” “yellow vests” on Roosevelt Boulevard there was a fire in a residential building. The fire broke out on the first floor, where the Bank is located.

Prime Minister Edward Philippe, who arrived in the Champs Elysees on Saturday, stressed that “the goal of the government is total rigidity” in response to the pogroms. Interior Minister Christoph Castaner said that the ranks of the protesters crept about a thousand “extremely aggressive people — “professionals in the pogroms and riots”. He also promised tougher measures.