Sending Vladimir Putin to The Hague to face war crimes charges may not be possible if he is the only person the West has to negotiate with to end the war in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron said, reports Guardian.

• In the most outspoken remarks by a European leader about the need to negotiate with Putin, Macron said that “if in a few months we have a window for negotiations, the question will be arbitration between the court and negotiations, and you have to negotiate with the leaders you have de facto, and I think negotiations will be a priority… You can put yourself in a position where you can say, “I want you to go to jail, but you’re the only one I can negotiate with.”

He said that Russia has lost all legitimacy, but if a future Ukrainian counteroffensive fails to achieve its military objectives, the nature of future European support for Ukraine will need to be assessed. At the same time, he noted that Ukraine protects not only its own borders, but also European ones.

Earlier on Wednesday, France’s president admitted that France was wrong about Eastern European countries, saying his country should have paid more attention to them amid their warnings about a belligerent Russia before its invasion of Ukraine.

In a speech in Bratislava, Macron told the GLOBSEC forum that there should be no division between “Old Europe” and “New Europe”, referring to long-standing differences between eastern and western members of the European Union over issues such as Russia.

Since the invasion, eastern EU countries such as Poland have criticized Macron for keeping open channels of communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin or that Russia should not be “humiliated” during international efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron, who in 2019 said NATO was “brain dead”, said on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “woke him up with the worst electric shock” by invading Ukraine.

“We now have all possible ways to help Ukraine carry out an effective counteroffensive,” the French head of state said in Bratislava.

It will be recalled that on March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting at least 100 children from Ukraine.

The Treaty of Rome includes 123 countries. About forty countries have never signed the treaty, including: China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Several dozen others have signed the charter but their legislatures have never ratified it, including Egypt, Iran, Israel, Russia, Sudan, Syria and the United States.

The ruling obliges the court’s 123 member states to arrest Putin and hand him over to The Hague for trial if he enters their territory.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, has repeatedly stated that he does not want to negotiate with Putin, and he especially does not want to negotiate as long as Russian troops are on the territory of Ukraine.