The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, recommended both the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Russian Government to refrain from fueling “neither with actions nor with words” the conflict declared by the Russian invasion of Ukraine after the exchange of invectives which the US president began the day before after describing his Russian counterpart as a “butcher”.
In an interview granted to the France 3 network, the French president acknowledged that he would like to lead a negotiated solution to the conflict and that this is the reason why his country “has chosen not to intervene by military means”
“We should not inflame this conflict with actions or words”, reiterated the president before distancing himself from Biden’s statement. “I would not use those words,” he added during the interview, collected by Le Figaro.
Biden described Putin on Saturday as a “butcher” during a visit by the US president to a Ukrainian refugee camp in Warsaw, Poland.
Later, he said that Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, “cannot stay in power” and urged the world’s democracies to unite in support of Ukraine. Addressing a crowd in Warsaw, Biden condemned the war and called the Russian invasion an assault on the freedom and security of the world. “For God’s sake, this man cannot stay in power.”
Later, the White House clarified that the US president did not call for a change of power in Moscow.
Previously, he had described Putin twice as a “war criminal.” Almost a week and a half ago, Biden also described the Russian president as a “murderous dictator” and “pure thug.”
Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov criticized Biden’s language once again on Saturday. “A head of state must maintain sobriety,” Peskov told the TASS agency.
“Every time personal insults of this kind occur, the window of opportunity for our bilateral relations becomes smaller, and we have to be aware of it,” he added.
Finally, Peskov declared himself surprised at such accusations made by someone who, he indicated, ” called at the time to bomb Yugoslavia.”