That's somewhat of an exaggeration. There were "troika" meetings in the late 1990s and in 2003, but France and Germany remained in the US' orbit. The Iraq War

That's somewhat of an exaggeration. There were "troika" meetings in the late 1990s and in 2003, but France and Germany remained in the US' orbit. The Iraq War was probably the time of maximum German/French political autonomy, when they publicly opposed the US on a major issue, but there's very little of that spirit left. France and Germany have hitched themselves even more strongly to the US now, to the point that the German foreign minister is talking about decoupling from China (a policy that makes no rational sense for Germany, but which signals that Germany sides with the US in the geopolitical rivalry). As far as their attitude towards Russia goes, Germany and France have had terrible relations with Russia since 2014, at the latest. Germany tried not to sever all economic ties with Russia, and it tried to negotiate a settlement to the war in the Donbas, but that doesn't mean that relations were friendly.