French Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu spoke with Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu about the conflict in Ukraine and the fight against terrorism, in their first telephone conversation in around one and a half years.
Lecornu condemned the terrorist attack near Moscow in late March and reminded Shoigu of France's willingness to step up exchanges in the fight against terrorism, the Ministry of Defence in Paris said in a statement on Wednesday evening.
Lecornu emphasized that France had no information on a link between the attack on the Crocus City Hall event centre in north-west Moscow, which left at least 139 dead, and Ukraine. The minister asked Russia to refrain from any instrumentalization of the attack.
According to Paris, the French defence minister also unreservedly condemned the Russian war against Ukraine. France would support Ukraine as long and as intensively as necessary in its fight for freedom and sovereignty in order to restore peace and security on the European continent.
According to reports from Moscow, Lecornu tried to convince the Russian side that Ukraine and the Western countries were not involved in the terrorist attack and blamed it on the extremist militia organization Islamic State.
Shoigu said that the investigation into the attack would be brought to an end and all those responsible punished, adding that Moscow had evidence of Ukrainian involvement in the attack's planning.
"The Kiev regime does nothing without the approval of Western curators. We trust that in this case French special services are not involved in it," Shoigu was quoted as saying in a Russian Defence Ministry statement.
Regarding a possible deployment of French forces in Ukraine, Shoigu stressed that such a move would "create problems for France itself," the Defence Ministry said.
At the same time, the Russian minister signalled his willingness to engage in dialogue on Ukraine. The basis for this could be along the lines of the Istanbul peace initiative shortly after the start of the war, he said. The ministry did not elaborate on what it meant.
At that time, Ukraine is said to have been prepared to renounce NATO membership. In the conversation, Shoigu described a peace summit planned by Kiev in Switzerland as pointless because Moscow was not a participant.