Sometimes in Diplomacy you have to publicly sxck dxck if you want to achieve your goal.

You make yourself look weak in order to give a strongman leader the cutscenes he needs for internal propagation, so he might agree to a diplomatic resolution where he will claim to be in control. Simple "alpha" manipulation, some might say women invented it (whoever has a wife knows what I'm talking about).

In the case of Macron it failed. And while I think it was wrong on the part of Macron to say "we shouldn't humiliate Putin" as Russia/Putin clearly deserves the humiliation they brought on themselves, I won't be the judge whether the weakness Macron publicly showed was Diplomacy or real.