Putin ‘not an unpleasant’ man when you meet him, Macron tells journalists

Emmanuel Macron has said the “paradox” of Vladimir Putin is that he is not an “unpleasant” man in person.

The French leader appeared on Saturday's episode of Les Rencontres du Papotin, a programme where autistic journalists interview famous people.

“First of all, when you meet him, he is not unpleasant. That’s the paradox, you see," Mr Macron said in the interview, which was recorded in late November.

Mr Macron has long been an advocate of maintaining a dialogue with Putin since his invasion of Ukraine last February.

Over the summer he angered Kyiv by declaring that Western governments should not "humiliate" the Russian president.

In recent days, however, the French leader became the first Western ally to agree to send Western armoured vehicles to Ukraine, in a major shift in policy.

In his New Year's TV address, Mr Macron also vowed to Ukrainians that France will "help you to victory," the first time he has explicitly supported a battlefield victory for Kyiv.

Ukraine has received Soviet-era tanks from its eastern European allies, but Mr Zelensky has repeatedly requested more advanced armoured vehicles from the West.

The French-made AMX-10 RC is an armoured reconnaissance vehicle with high mobility. It is armed with a 105mm cannon and has a crew of four.

Mr Zelensky thanked Mr Macron in a video address and appealed to other allies to do the same.

"This is something that sends a clear signal to all our partners – there is no rational reason why Ukraine has not yet been supplied with Western tanks," he said.

Hours later, the US and Germany also said they would send armoured vehicles to help repel Russian forces.

In his interview on Les Rencontres du Papotin, which was recorded weeks before his major public shift on Ukraine policy, Mr Macron also distilled Mr Putin’s goal in invading Ukraine as a land grab.

“I think there is nothing to justify starting a war," he said. "Basically he launched this war to recover territories and to extend Russia’s perimeter to the empire that once existed.

"He took a very heavy responsibility for him, his people, obviously for the people of Ukraine and for us all. This is how I see things," he added.