“There is a dynamic that must be verified and consolidated”, said the Frenchman Macron.
Paris:
French President Emmanuel Macron and his US counterpart Joe Biden on Tuesday agreed on the need to verify Russian claims that it is starting to withdraw troops from the Ukrainian border, the French president said.
Elysee said in the phone conversation that lasted about an hour, the two presidents also underscored the importance of being “fully coordinated” in policy toward Russia under President Vladimir Putin.
“A week after President Macron’s visit (to Moscow and then to Kiev), we see that we have some reason to hope,” it said.
In the first announced withdrawal of more than 100,000 Russia’s troops gathered at Ukraine’s border, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said some troops and hardware were returning to bases at the end of the planned exercise.
The French president insisted that “such a start of the de-escalation movement” would be in line with what Putin told Macron at his talks in Moscow last week.
“There is a dynamic that must be verified and consolidated”, the president said, adding that “everything is very fragile”.
It warned that many outcomes are still possible “given the scale of Russian military deployment” which “remains very impressive”.
It said Macron would speak in the near future to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who himself went to Moscow on Tuesday for talks with Putin.
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