The extremely rare negotiations were the first since October 2022.
According to a statement released by the French Ministry of Defense, the country’s Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu told his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu that Paris is always ready to fight terrorism and “intensify the exchange of information to make the fight against this threat more effective.”
Last month, criminals stormed the Crocus City Hall concert hall on the outskirts of the Russian capital, killing 144 people and injuring hundreds more.
Islamic State (IS) jihadists have repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attack, and IS-affiliated media outlets have released harrowing videos from the concert hall.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged that “radical Islamists” carried out the attack, he continues to insist that Ukraine was somehow involved, without providing any evidence.
During the conversation, S. Lecornu indicated that France has no information that would allow to confirm these claims by Moscow and called on Russia to “cease any instrumentalization of the attack”, the Ministry of Defense said.
“The minister also unreservedly condemned the war of aggression launched by Russia in Ukraine,” the statement said.
“France will continue to support Ukraine as long and as intensively as necessary in the struggle for freedom and sovereignty to ensure peace and security on the European continent,” it added.
In March, French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris had offered “closer cooperation” to Russian security services. However, he added that this cooperation would take place only at the technical level and would not be supported by direct negotiations with V. Putin, but by communication between ministers.
In 2022, E. Macron tried to warn V. Putin not to attack Ukraine with several phone calls and visited Moscow at the beginning of the same year.
Even after the start of the war in Ukraine, he continued to talk to the Russian president by phone, and the last such conversation took place in September 2022.
But in recent months, Macron has further hardened his stance on Russia, refusing to rule out the possibility of deploying French troops to Ukraine.
