French president Emmanuel Macron condemned Vladimir Putin’s “ignoble war” against Ukraine but said he would keep open lines of communication with the Russian president to try and convince him to stop his deadly military offensive, reports Politico.
“It is alone and in a deliberate manner that, reneging on [his previous] commitments … President Putin has chosen war,” the French president said in a televised speech on Wednesday evening.
Talking to a domestic audience, Macron made a point of countering Putin’s false narrative about the war being a defensive move against NATO’s eastern expansion.
“This war is not a conflict between NATO and the West on the one hand, and Russia on the other … there are no NATO troops or bases in Ukraine. These are lies,” Macron said. “Russia is not being aggressed, it is the aggressor.”
Several of Macron’s rivals in the campaign ahead of April’s presidential election have until recently argued that Putin was legitimate in his grievances.
Slamming Putin’s “unbearable propaganda,” Macron also said the war was not “a fight against Nazism. It is a lie. An insult to the history of Russia and Ukraine, to the memory of our elders who fought side by side against the Nazis.”
While strongly condemning Putin’s acts, the French president said he would keep an open line of communication with the Kremlin in an effort to stop the spread of the conflict.