PARIS, April 4. /TASS/. France needs to cooperate with any country facing the risk of terrorist attacks, the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said in comments on the recent phone talks between French and Russian defense ministers.
"We must work together with all those who face the threat of terrorism. When we have data, we must conduct technical exchange of information. This is our duty," he said.
He rejected any involvement of Paris in the attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow. "Assumptions that France or Ukraine could be behind this make no sense and are untrue," Macron said.
He described such assumptions as disinformation.
He said the phone talks between French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu and his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu were held at France's initiative to express solidarity with the Russian minister and share information.
"I instructed the minister and the relevant services to have a technical exchange of information with their [Russian] counterparts to communicate a message of solidarity, and also because we had useful information, which I will not disclose here, about who was behind this terrorist attack," Macron said.
On Wednesday, Shoigu and Lecornu spoke by phone for the first time since October 2022. They discussed the attack on the concert hall and the issue of Ukraine. Shoigu told his counterpart he hoped French special services were not involved in the attack. The Russian Defense Ministry also said Lecornu "insisted in attempts to assure that Ukraine and Western countries were not involved in the terrorist attack," instead shifting the responsibility to the Islamic State group, which is banned in Russia.
Shoigu said the investigation of the terrorist attack will be brought to an end and all culprits will be punished. On the subject of the Elysee Palace's statements about sending French troops to Ukraine, Shoigu told his counterpart that "if they are put into practice, it will create problems for France itself," the Russian Defense Ministry said following the conversation.