Russia Condemns French President Macron To Consider Moscow A Big Threat To Europe

French President Emmanuel Macron/PHOTO via Instagram @emmanuelmacron

JAKARTA - Russia rejected Europe's proposal to send peacekeepers to Ukraine. Russia says French President Emmanuel Macron has threatened him by declaring Moscow a major threat to Europe.

French President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address he plans to hold a meeting next week with military commanders from European countries willing to send troops to Ukraine after a peace agreement with Russia.

Macrn also said France should be ready if the United States is no longer by his side.

President Donald Trump is currently changing US policies against Ukraine and Russia and demanding an agreement to end the war, while discussing renewal of relations with Moscow.

Macron says Russia is a "threat to France and Europe", that Ukraine's war has become a "global conflict".

Macron will open debate over the expansion of the French nuclear umbrella to its European allies.

The Kremlin said Macron's speech was very confrontational and it was clear Macron wanted the war in Ukraine to continue.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin's foreign minister said the speech was a threat to Russia.

"This is of course a threat" to Russia, Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

In contrast to their predecessors who also wanted to fight against Russia, Napoleon, Hitler, "Macron didn't act well, because they said bluntly 'we have to beat Russia, we have to beat Russia'," Lavrov continued.

Lavrov also rejected Europe's idea of sending peacekeepers from NATO member states to Ukraine, saying Moscow would consider the deployment a NATO presence in Ukraine and that Moscow would not allow it.

Russia and the United States have so far been the world's largest nuclear power countries, with more than 5,000 nuclear warheads each, followed by China with about 500 warheads, then France with 290 nuclear warheads and the UK with 225 nuclear warheads, according to the American Federation of Scientists.

Russian officials say the harsh rhetoric of Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other European countries over the past few days has not been supported by military force and has shown Russian progress on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Putin last year ordered the regular number of Russian soldiers to be increased by 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active soldiers.

Putin has repeatedly rejected Western claims that make no sense about Russia one day could attack NATO members.

Ukraine and Western countries say Putin is involved in the confiscation of imperial-style soil in Ukraine, and has repeatedly vowed to defeat Russia, which currently controls less than 20% of Ukraine's territory, including Crimea and parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Putin described the war as part of a historic struggle against the West, which he said embarrassed Russia, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, by expanding NATO and violating Moscow's territory limits, including Ukraine.