President Vladimir Putin on Sunday reiterated to France’s Emmanuel Macron that he supposed to achieve his targets of “denazifying” Ukraine both by diplomatic means or by way of army operations, a French official stated.
The Russian chief stated he had no intention of attacking nuclear energy stations and denied the Russian military had focused civilians amid bombardments on Ukrainian cities, the official stated on Sunday.
The Russian president had a close to two-hour name with Macron on Sunday, one in every of a number of since Russia invaded Ukraine 11 days in the past. The French president urged Putin to finish the assault and rejected his justification of the assault.
Putin has conditioned ceasefire talks and discovering a diplomatic answer on Ukrainians laying down their weapons.
The Russian president was beneficial in precept to conducting talks among the many Worldwide Atomic Power Company and officers from Moscow and Kyiv over defending the security of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear website in south-eastern Ukraine, and the location of Chernobyl, the French official added.
Macron had concluded from an trade with Putin on Thursday that “the worst was but to come back” in Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Requested whether or not this view had developed, the French official pointed to Russian assaults on the Ukraine metropolis of Mariupol since then, including: “The scenario is critical.”
He added that western states had been engaged on new sanctions. France discovered the contribution of Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett “helpful” in efforts to dialogue with Russia. Macron can be as a consequence of proceed his exchanges with Bennett and different western leaders, the official stated.
Requested about US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s feedback a couple of potential ban on oil imports, the official stated that “different sanctions could possibly be taken” and had been being examined however didn’t spell out how superior these discussions had been.
“The query immediately is to see how we will resort to strategic reserves to cease costs from spiralling even additional on oil and fuel markets, and likewise, in the long term, how we handle our shares and our provides,” the official stated.