Commenting on Emmanuel Macron's speech last night, the Kremlin said that the French president's words were "extremely confrontational" and that there was a sense that France wanted the war in Ukraine to continue.
At a time when Moscow and Washington are getting closer, Macron said in a televised speech, among other things, that Russia has "already turned the Ukrainian conflict into a global one," that it "violates our borders to kill opponents, manipulates elections in Romania, in Moldova," that it "organizes digital attacks on our hospitals," and "tries to manipulate our opinion with the lies it spreads on social media."
In his words, as reported by Beta, "it seems that this aggressiveness knows no bounds," and in the face of these dangers, "remaining an observer would be madness."
"There is a feeling that France wants the war to continue," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Guardian.
He also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin agrees with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the invasion of Ukraine is a "proxy war" between the US, which is helping Ukraine, and Russia, and that it must end.
"We can and want to agree with that, and we agree with that. That's how things are. We have repeated that many times. We said that this is actually a conflict between Russia and the collective West. And the main state of the collective West is the United States of America," Peskov said, commenting on Rubio's statements.
"So this is completely consistent with the position that our president and our foreign minister have stated repeatedly. We have said this repeatedly and, yes, we agree that it is time to stop this conflict and this war," he added.
In a separate statement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Macron's comments about extending protection for France's nuclear arsenal to other European countries posed a threat to Russia.
"If he considers us a threat, calls a meeting of the chiefs of general staff of European countries and Britain, says it is necessary to use nuclear weapons, prepares to use nuclear weapons against Russia, then, of course, that is a threat," Lavrov told the state-run RIA news agency.
He also said that any presence of European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine would be seen as an official involvement of NATO forces in the war and stressed that Russia "will not allow that to happen."
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