French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday denounced the "lies" spread by the Russian government to justify a war in Ukraine, but said he would remain in contact with President Vladimir Putin to try and obtain a ceasefire.
Macron, who has led European efforts to avert war by visiting Putin in Moscow last month and mediating over the phone between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Russian leader, squarely put the blame on hostilities on the Kremlin.
"It is alone, betraying his international commitments one by one, that President Putin chose war," Macron said in a nationwide address to the French people.
"This war is not a conflict between the West and Russia, as some would like us to believe. There is no NATO base in Ukraine. These are lies. Russia is not agressed, it is the aggressor. This war is not a fight against Nazism ... it's a lie," Macron added.
Macron, who was speaking less than two months before a presidential election in which he is still to declare his candidacy, said he would continue to defend France's values and standing in the world.
(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel and Sudip Kar-Gupta; writing by Michel Rose; Editing by Richard Lough)
