Macron Renews Call for Russia to Receive Security Guarantees to End War in Ukraine

Mr. Macron was defending a stance that has angered Ukraine and its Western allies. He made the remarks as Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

was preparing to meet with President Biden at the White House and address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night. The high-profile visit is an effort to buttress political support in Washington, a major supplier of weapons to counter Russia’s invasion.

“Whoever reproaches me for asserting myself on this topic should then explain to me what they propose. What the people who refuse to prepare and work on this are proposing is total war. A total war that will involve the whole continent,” Mr. Macron said.

Senior Ukrainian officials have dismissed the notion that Russia needs security guarantees as an attempt to lay the foundations for Moscow to receive concessions after launching the war. The French president’s critics say he also risks reinforcing one of President Vladimir Putin’s rationales for the invasion: That Russia was countering the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Eastern Europe.

Mr. Macron traveled to Washington at the end of November for talks with Mr. Biden on the war, telling French TV shortly after the meeting that the two leaders discussed the “security architecture in which we want to live tomorrow.” 

“This means that one of the essential points we must address—as President Putin has always said—is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia,” Macron added.

Mykhailo Podolyak,

an adviser to Mr. Zelensky, swiftly rejected the idea in a Twitter post, saying the “civilized world needs ‘security guarantees’ from barbaric intentions of post-Putin Russia.” 

Mr. Macron’s outreach to Mr. Putin has been a source of tension with Ukraine and its allies since the early months of the conflict when he regularly held phone calls with the Russian leader. After Moscow failed in its attempt to capture Kyiv, Mr. Macron warned: “We must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means.”

Mr. Macron has long called on the European Union to shore up its defenses as a way to ensure peace across the region. A month before Russia invaded Ukraine, the French leader delivered a high-profile address before the European Parliament that called for “a new order of security and stability” that he said would be built by Europeans, shared with NATO allies and then offered “for negotiation to Russia.”

Military spending across the bloc is uneven, with many countries failing to meet the NATO spending target of 2% of their gross domestic product. The continent is also struggling to deliver large volumes of heavy artillery and other weapons that have allowed Ukraine to regain territory in the conflict.

Write to Stacy Meichtry at Stacy.Meichtry@wsj.com