PARIS, July 14. /TASS/. France seeks to end the conflict in Ukraine and does not want it to spill over and turn into a new world war, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with France 2 and TF1 TV channels on Thursday.

"We would like to stop the war without joining it. We do not want a global war and a geographical spillover of this conflict to other regions," he stressed. The head of state explained that France hopes to attain this by supporting Ukraine and introducing restrictions against Russia’s economy.

"We need to be ready for this conflict to be a long one. A particularly difficult period will be in the summer and in the beginning of autumn. Yet, France still intends to provide economic and military support to Ukraine," he added.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." Following this, the US and its allies announced the introduction of sweeping sanctions against Russia and stepped up arms deliveries to Kiev. A number of Western politicians admitted that this was essentially an economic war against Russia.