French President Emmanuel Macron said at a security conference in the Slovakian capital on Wednesday that his Russian counterpart President Vladimir Putin had jolted NATO awake by invading Ukraine last year. Macron also called on the West to offer Ukraine "tangible and credible" security guarantees as it battles the Russian invasion.
"I had a harsh word for NATO in December 2019," Macron said at the GLOBSEC Bratislava Global Security Forum, recalling how he had called the Western defence alliance "brain dead" at the time. "I can say that today Vladimir Putin jolted it awake with the worst of electric shocks," he added.
