Emmanuel Macron in video conferencing with Vladimir Putin, photo: Raphael LafarGue-Pool / Sipa Press / Profimedia
Russia said on Friday that the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, spoke inappropriate for a head of state when he named the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, “a cape at our gates,” reports Reuters.
Macron, who made this remark in an interview last week, was frequently the target of Russian critics because of his support for Ukraine.
The spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zaharova, told Moscow journalists that Macron is constantly making bizarre statements that sometimes cross the decent line and turn into “low-case insults”.
“This is unworthy of a head of state,” Zaharova said.
“Since 2007-2008 (Russian intervention in Georgia, no), President Putin rarely respected his commitments. He was constantly a destabilizing force. And he sought to review the borders to expand his power,” the French president said in the interview broadcast last week.
Macron warned Europeans not to be naive to Vladimir Putin
The leader of the Élysée Palace stressed that “Russia has become a sustainable destabilizing force and a potential threat to many of us.”
“A country that invests 40% of its budget in such equipment, which has mobilized an army of over 1.3 million people, will not return to peace and an open democratic system,” the President of France warned.
“So, including for his own survival, he (Putin) has to continue to eat. This is. And therefore he is a predator, a caps at our gates. I do not say that tomorrow France will be attacked, but it is a threat to Europeans (…) We do not have to be naive,” the European leader insisted.
The interview was conducted at the end of the Washington meeting between Donald Trump and several European leaders, in which the organization of a meeting between Volodimir Zelenski and Vladimir Putin was announced.
