Macron: Putin was ambiguous on the phone

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been ambiguous during the talks he had with Emmanuel Macron, the French president announced on the night of Thursday to Friday.

“Yes, there was duplicity. Yes there was a deliberate, conscious choice to go to war while we could still negotiate peace,” Macron told reporters after an EU summit where he said France will add its own sanctions to an EU -package.

Despite this, Macron wants to “leave the way open” for a dialogue with Moscow to halt the Russian offensive in Ukraine. He said Thursday he had a “candid, direct and prompt” conversation with his Russian counterpart. “I think it is my responsibility to leave this path open so that the day the conditions can be met, we can end hostilities.”

According to the French president, he had a meeting with Putin on Thursday to ask him to stop military operations because Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky had asked him to do so. “It was also to ask him to talk to President Zelensky, who had requested that because he could not reach him.”