French President Emmanuel Macron praised President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike inside Russian territory, calling it “a good decision.”
Macron made the comments late Monday, highlighting the U.S. shift as a response to Russia escalating the conflict by deploying North Korean soldiers alongside its own forces.
“Russia is the only power that made an escalatory decision … it’s really this break that led to the U.S. decision,” Macron told reporters during the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. His statement came after Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that the use of American weapons to attack Russian targets marked “a qualitatively new situation in terms of the involvement of the United States in this conflict.”
Earlier this year, Macron expressed support for allowing Ukraine to target Russian military sites, noting that Moscow was exploiting restrictions on Western weapons to its advantage.
Reports surfaced on Sunday that Biden’s administration had authorized Ukraine to use long-range ATACMS missiles against Russian targets. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has expressed his intention to pursue a peace deal with Russia and threatened to halt military aid to Ukraine.
In response to the shift in U.S. policy, the U.K. is expected to supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles, though Germany has reaffirmed its position of not providing long-range missiles to Kyiv.
