The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament warned French President Emmanuel Macron against sending troops to Ukraine, saying they would meet the same fate as Napoleon’s army.
Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, who is a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, made the remarks in a post on Telegram on Wednesday.
He was responding to Macron’s statement on Monday that “nothing is ruled out” when it comes to Western countries putting boots on the ground in Ukraine to help repel Russia’s invasion.
“Before making such statements, Macron would do well to remember how it ended for Napoleon and his soldiers, more than 600,000 of whom were left lying in the damp earth,” Volodin said, referring to the disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812.
The exact number of Grande Armée infantry killed in Napoleon’s military campaign is contested but historians generally put the figure above 300,000.
Volodin also accused Macron of wanting to “spark a third world war” in order to stay in power.
Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and prime minister who is now deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, echoed Volodin’s Napoleon comparison in his own post on Telegram on Wednesday.
“The petty and tragic heirs of Bonaparte … are eager for revenge with Napoleonic magnitude and are spouting fierce and extremely dangerous nonsense,” he said.
Macron’s comments were made on Monday at a summit of European leaders in Paris to discuss ramping up support for Kyiv.
The prospect of sending Western troops to Ukraine was rejected by other NATO members, including the U.S. and Germany, and sharply criticized by French opposition parties, but welcomed by Estonia and Lithuania.