Putin and Macron’s telephone bust-up revealed

‘I don’t know where your lawyers learned law’

A BOMBSHELL telephone bust-up between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin was released yesterday.

The French leader granted a filmmaker fly-onthe-wall access to the Elysée during his botched diplomatic attempts to stop Putin invading Ukraine. Allies of the Russian dictator responded with fury yesterday, accusing France of breaching basic protocols for exchanges between foreign leaders.

‘Diplomatic etiquette does not provide for unilateral leaks of such recordings,’ Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Maria Zakharova, Putin’s chief spokesman, branded the footage ‘an example of the odd way they interpret the word diplomacy’.

The phone call with Putin took place on February 20, just four days before he ordered the unprovoked invasion of Russia’s neighbour.

The two-hour documentary, broadcast on public channel France 2, also carried excerpts of Mr Macron’s discussions with other leaders, including Boris Johnson.

It highlights how Mr Macron tried to position himself as the peacemaker of Europe, holding talks with Putin while most other Western leaders were shunning him.

The French president is shown in the documentary telling Putin that he ‘doesn’t give a damn’ about so-called mediation proposals from pro-Moscow separatists.

‘I don’t know where your lawyers learned law,’ he told Putin. ‘The texts of laws are proposed by separatist groups and not by the democratically elected authorities.’

Putin replied: ‘This is not a democratically elected government. They came to power in a coup, there were people burned alive, it was a bloodbath and Zelensky is one of those responsible.’ He ended the conversation by saying he was going to play ice hockey, brushing off Mr Macron’s demands to meet for a summit with US President Joe Biden.

The following day, Putin announced he would recognise the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Last night the governor of Donetsk, the last province of eastern Ukraine partially under the control of the country’s government, urged 350,000 residents to flee. Pavlo Kyrylenko’s request came as at least two people were killed in the latest Russian shelling of the city of Sloviansk.