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A French television documentary aired last week reveals the dialogue of a February call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin as Macron tried to avert the war in Ukraine.
“Vladimir … tell me what your intentions are,” Macron pressed Putin on a call on Feb. 20, captured by cameras filming for the documentary “A President, Europe and War,” according to the Associated Press.
On the call, Putin told Macron that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “is lying to you” and falsely claimed that Zelensky came to power in a “bloody coup” in which “people were burned alive,” the AP reported, quoting from the documentary. Putin closed the call by telling Macron he was at a gym to play ice hockey.
Macron’s pleas during the conversation for Putin to “calm things down” went unheeded, and the documentary by journalist Guy Lagache — which was intended to follow Macron during France’s six-month rotation leading the European Union — ended up providing a glimpse into the response to the invasion at the highest levels of the French government.
On the first day of the war, according to the AP, Zelensky called Macron in desperation, the documentary reveals, telling him: “Now they are in Kyiv. We are fighting in Kyiv, Emmanuel.”
The French government is normally guarded with media access, the AP said, but the documentary filmmakers were allowed to film the president at work in his bunker under the palace, on a plane and on trips to Kyiv and Moscow.
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