For the first time in over a month, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron spoke on the phone. The conversation lasted for over two hours this afternoon. According to a statement from the Kremlin, Putin has requested that the supply of weapons to Ukraine be stopped.
– The West can help stop these atrocities by exercising appropriate influence over the Kyiv authorities, as well as by stopping the supply of weapons to Ukraine, the president said in a statement from the Kremlin, quoted by the French La Nouvelle Observateur.
He also said in the statement that Kyiv was “unprepared for serious work” during the peace talks.
The French president published a summary of his part of the conversation late Tuesday afternoon.
Requested continued Azovstal evacuation
According to the statement, the president called on Russia to live up to its responsibilities as a permanent member of the Security Council. Macron called on Putin to immediately suspend hostilities in Ukraine.
The conversation took place during the same period as Ukrainian media reported that Russian forces stormed the Azovstal steelworks in besieged Mariupol. After a ceasefire where civilians had been evacuated.
Macron expressed deep concern about Mariupol and the situation in Donbass. He asked Putin to allow the evacuation of the Azovstal facility to continue. In addition, the evacuees must be allowed to choose where they want to go, in accordance with international law.
The conversation lasted two hours and ten minutes. It’s been more than a month since the two last spoke on the phone. The two have not been in contact since the massacre in the Ukrainian city of Bucha was uncovered.
President Macron is the European leader who has had the most frequent contact with Vladimir Putin since the start of the war. Macron conducted the conversation as French president, but also because France holds the presidency of the EU Council this semester. Since December last year, the two presidents have spoken together almost twenty times.
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