Russia criticized Emmanuel Macron on Sunday for saying he wanted to see Russia defeated, saying Moscow still remembers the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte and accusing the French president of bilateral diplomacy with the Kremlin, Reuters reported.

Macron said he wants Russia defeated in the war in Ukraine, while warning those who want to “crush Russia first” that this will never be the position of Paris, writes Agerpres.

“I want the defeat of Russia in Ukraine and I want Ukraine to be able to defend its position, but I am convinced that in the end it will not end in a military way,” the French head of state said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche, Le Figaro and France Inter, which came out on Saturday night.

“I do not believe, like some, that Russia should be completely defeated, attacked on its territory. These observers want to crush Russia first of all. This was not and will never be the position of France,” he added.

“About “never”: France did not start with Macron, and in the center of Paris lie the remains of Napoleon, honored at the state level. France must understand,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

“In general, Macron is invaluable,” said a representative of Russian diplomacy, who, however, added that the words of the French head of state indicate that the West is involved in discussions about regime change in Russia.

Macron has been criticized by some NATO allies for his mixed assessment of his policy on the Ukraine-Russia war, with some seeing Paris as a weak link in the Western alliance.

In an interview that he gave on Friday evening on the plane that he used to return to the country after participating in the Security Conference in Munich, the French president confirmed his desire to facilitate a negotiated solution to the conflict in Ukraine.

In Munich, he predicted that Russia would be defeated in Ukraine, but some observers criticized him for not going so far as to assume that Moscow would be defeated.