Moscow accused France and other European states of aiming to prolong the Russia-Ukraine war by pledging more support to Kyiv as Washington backs away, and praised a top US official for describing the conflict in a way that “chimes perfectly” with the Kremlin’s view.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy attended an emergency security summit of European leaders in Brussels on Thursday, after a Russian missile hit a hotel where US and British aid volunteers were staying in his eastern hometown of Kryvyi Rih. They survived, but four people were killed and 32 injured in an attack that came hours after Washington confirmed that it had stopped sharing intelligence with Kyiv.
“There must be no pause in the pressure on Russia to stop this war and terror against life,” Mr Zelenskiy said.
Ukraine said Russia also launched more than 100 drones late on Wednesday night. Most were intercepted, but two people were injured and thousands left without power after energy infrastructure was damaged in the Black Sea region of Odesa.
Air raid sirens wailed across Ukraine as French president Emmanuel Macron said in an address to his nation that it must beef up its defences, do more to support Ukraine and consider whether to use its nuclear arsenal to protect other European states, to counter the “threat” from Russia and a potential reduction in US security commitments.
“The statement was extremely confrontational. It can hardly be seen as a speech by a head of state who seeks peace. Rather…one can conclude that Paris’s thoughts are mostly about…continuing the war,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov compared Mr Macron unfavourably to “his predecessors, who also sought to fight with Russia - Napoleon, Hitler,” because at least they “stated openly: ‘We must conquer Russia’”.
“And he apparently wants the same thing, but for some reason says that it is necessary to fight Russia so that it does not defeat France, that Russia poses dangers to France and Europe,” Mr Lavrov added, describing Mr Macron’s remarks on nuclear weapons as a “threat” to Russia.
France and Britain have said they would consider sending peacekeepers to Ukraine to oversee any peace deal, drawing fierce criticism from the Kremlin as it revels in the sudden shift in Washington’s position on the war and world affairs more broadly, and welcomes US president Donald Trump’s push for a rapprochement with Russia.
“In reality, we are dealing with a blatant attempt to gain respite at any cost for the Kyiv regime and the Ukrainian armed forces,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said of European talks on a possible peacekeeping mission for Ukraine.
“The deployment…of some European troops, foreign contingents under some kind of ‘Euro-flags’, military bases, peacekeeping operations, ‘coalitions of the willing,’ is totally unacceptable,” she added.
The Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of pro-western Ukraine in February 2022 on the false grounds that Nato planned to use it as a bridgehead to attack Russia and that its Russian speakers were being oppressed.
When Russia failed to secure the quick victory it expected, the Kremlin began to claim that its forces were actually fighting what it called the US-led “collective West” on Ukrainian territory in a proxy war started by Washington and its allies.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio told Fox News on Wednesday that Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945 was “a proxy war between nuclear powers – the United States, helping Ukraine, and Russia – and it needs to come to an end."
Mr Peskov said on Thursday: “That’s the way it is. We have said this repeatedly…So this chimes perfectly with [our] position.”
