The French Defense Minister spoke on the phone with Shoigu

French Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu April 3 talked on the phone with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. This was reported by French media and international agencies; there is no comment from the Russian Ministry of Defense yet.

As the French ministry said in a statement, Lecornu, on behalf of France, expressed solidarity with the victims of the terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall near Moscow on March 22, which killed at least 144 people.

It is reported that Lecornu declared France’s readiness to fight terrorism and strengthen cooperation with Russia in order to most effectively counter this threat. At the same time, the French minister saidthat Paris does not have any information that would indicate a connection between the terrorist attack and Ukraine, and called on Russian authorities to stop using the Crocus attack to make accusations against Ukraine.

The report also notes that the parties discussed the war in Ukraine, with Lecornu saying that France condemns the Russian invasion and will continue to support Kyiv.

The conversation took place at the initiative of the French side. This is the first direct conversation between the ministers since October 2022, when Shoigu called the defense ministers of Western countries with the assertion that Ukraine allegedly wants to detonate a so-called dirty nuclear bomb (Russia has not provided evidence of such intentions since then).

French President Emmanuel Macron last month did not rule out sending military personnel from Western countries to Ukraine, which caused a sharp reaction from Moscow, as well as disagreement from a number of France’s NATO partners. Macron explained that we are not talking about any specific plans, nor about the participation of the military directly in hostilities. However, he continues to insist that sending military personnel, including French ones, to Ukraine should not be ruled out in order to create a situation of “strategic uncertainty” for Russia.

The Islamic State, a recognized terrorist organization that has previously carried out terrorist attacks in France, announced that it carried out an attack on Crocus City Hall. The alleged participants in the attack, natives of Tajikistan, were detained. Representatives of the Russian authorities claim, without providing evidence, that Ukraine could have been involved in the terrorist attack. Kyiv and its allies categorically reject this.