French president Emmanuel Macron has said that Europe's credibility would be "reduced to zero" if Russia were successful in Ukraine.
Macron caused controversy last month after he said he could not rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future, with many leaders distancing themselves from the French president's comments.
However, Macron has doubled down on his sentiment, saying he "deeply" disagrees with the opposition leaders who said his comments were bellicose.
Macron has drawn ire from both wings of French politics as the party of hard-right Marine Le Pen abstained in parliament on a vote earlier this week about a security pact France signed with Ukraine, while the hard-left France Unbowed party voted against it.
Macron has found himself caught against his fellow EU leaders
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In a television interview directed at a domestic audience, Macron said: "If Russia wins this war, Europe's credibility will be reduced to zero.
"If war spread in Europe, Russia would be to blame...But if we decided to be weak; if we decided today that we would not respond, it would be choosing defeat already. And I don't want that."
"I want Russia to stop this war and retreat from its positions and allow peace...I'm not going to give visibility to someone who is not giving me any. This is a question for President Putin. I have reasons not to be precise."
Macron said France would never initiate an offensive against Russia, and that Paris was not at war with Moscow, despite the fact that Russia had launched aggressive attacks against French interests in and outside France.
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Macron has been supportive of Zelensky
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He added: "Peace does not mean the capitulation of Ukraine...Wanting peace does not mean defeat. Wanting peace does not mean dropping Ukraine."
Macron also said he had not cancelled a planned visit to Ukraine for security reasons saying: "That's what Russia said. You shouldn't believe them."
Chief of Russia's foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin said that Macron's remarks about the possibility of sending soldiers from Nato countries to Ukraine were "crazy and paranoid dreams."
Macron's comments were met with a dressing down from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is set to host the French President alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at a summit in Berlin later today.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to host French President Emmanuel Macron
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Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) announced earlier today that a Russian national had been detained in Moscow on suspicion of treason and had confessed to assembling and launching drones on behalf of Ukraine.
An FSB spokesperson said the man "assembled and launched unmanned aerial vehicles to create false targets in the immediate vicinity of Russian Defence Ministry facilities."
In recent months, Kyiv has stepped up strikes against economic targets inside Russia, hitting a string of oil refineries and metal plants.
