French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday hit back at Russia, after the Kremlin warned him not to threaten it with nuclear rhetoric and drew comparisons with Napoleon's failed conquest of Russia.

In a solemn address on Wednesday, Macron warned the French nation Russia was rearming quickly on the back of its invasion of Ukraine and could attack more countries if it was not firmly deterred, including with the French nuclear umbrella.

"I know President Putin well. If he's reacting like that, it's because he knows what I said is true," Macron told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels.

"He's making a historical error: Napoleon waged conquests. The only imperialistic power I see in Europe right now is Russia," he said, responding to a question posed by a Russian journalist in exile in France.

Macron said he knew Putin could betray his word, because he had done just that when it did not respect the Minsk agreements signed with France, Germany and Ukraine after the invasion of Crimea in 2014.

He also said the reactions in Moscow on Thursday were probably so vociferous because Russia's intentions to continue waging war with Europe eventually, if a rushed peace treaty in Ukraine is signed, had been uncovered.

"He was probably piqued by the fact we're exposing his game," Macron said.

Responding to a question on U.S. President Donald Trump's comments questioning whether France would come to the U.S.'s rescue if it was attacked, Macron said France and other European countries had joined U.S. troops in fighting in Afghanistan after 9/11.

"Not only the French, but the Europeans were there when we were called for Afghanistan. And by the way, they weren't politely warned when (the U.S. left Afghanistan)," Macron said. "We are loyal and faithful allies."

Macron also said he had been approached by other leaders all day during an EU summit in Brussels about his offer to extend French nuclear deterrence to the rest of Europe and hopes to see cooperation by the end of the first half of 2025, after technical talks with other leaders.

He has invited other EU leaders to a meeting of European army chiefs in Paris on Tuesday, he said.

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Mocking him as 'Micron', Russia warns Macron not to threaten it

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with French President Emmanuel Macron in Moscow.

Russia warned French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday not to threaten it with nuclear rhetoric and, mocking his height by calling him 'Micron', ruled out European proposals to send peacekeeping forces from NATO members to Ukraine.

Macron said in an address to the nation on Wednesday that Russia was a threat to Europe, Paris could discuss extending its nuclear umbrella to allies and that he would hold a meeting of army chiefs from European countries willing to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine after a peace deal.

The Kremlin said the speech was extremely confrontational and that Macron wanted the war in Ukraine to continue.

"This (speech) is, of course, a threat against Russia," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"Unlike their predecessors, who also wanted to fight against Russia, Napoleon, Hitler, Mr Macron does not act very gracefully, because at least they said it bluntly: 'We must conquer Russia, we must defeat Russia'.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to the biggest confrontation between the West and Russia since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Kremlin and White House have said missteps could trigger World War Three.

Russia and the United States are the world's biggest nuclear powers, with over 5,000 nuclear warheads each. China has about 500, France has 290 and Britain 225, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

Russian officials and lawmakers accused Macron of rhetoric that could push the world closer to the abyss. Russian cartoons cast him as Napoleon Bonaparte riding towards defeat in Russia in 1812.

"Micron himself poses no big threat though. He'll disappear forever no later than May 14, 2027. And he won't be missed," former President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on X, looking ahead to the end of Macron's term.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested Macron might want help measuring his true military size, and her ministry said his speech contained "notes of nuclear blackmail" and amounted to a threat directed towards Russia.

"Paris' ambitions to become the nuclear 'patron' of all of Europe have burst out into the open, by providing it with its own 'nuclear umbrella', almost to replace the American one. Needless to say, this will not lead to strengthening the security of either France itself or its allies," it said.

NO ON PEACEKEEPERS

Russian advances in Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump's upending of U.S. policy on the war have caused fears among European leaders that Washington is turning its back on Europe.

Russian officials say tough rhetoric from Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other European powers is not backed up by hard military power and point to Russia's advances on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Lavrov and the Kremlin dismissed Macron's proposal to send peacekeepers to Ukraine and said Russia would not agree to it.

"We are talking about such a confrontational deployment of an ephemeral contingent," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Lavrov said saying Moscow would see such a deployment as NATO presence in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed Western assertions that Russia could one day attack a NATO member.

He portrays the war as part of a historic struggle with the West following the collapse of the Soviet Union and NATO's encroachment on what he considers Moscow's sphere of influence.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week cast the conflict as a proxy war between Russia and the U.S., a position the Kremlin said was accurate.

"This is actually a conflict between Russia and the collective West. And the main country of the collective West is the United States of America," Peskov said. "We agree that it is time to stop this conflict and this war."

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