The French president wants to conquer Russia just as the two European dictators aspired to, Moscow's foreign minister has said

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said compared French President Emmanuel Macron to Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, saying that he is also looking to impose a defeat upon Russia.

During an address to the nation on Wednesday, Macron labeled Russia a "threat to France and Europe" and announced that he was considering expanding Paris's nuclear deterrent to cover other EU member-states.

He insisted that the bloc needs to strengthen its independence when it comes to defense as there are doubts about the US continuing to protect the EU after the administration of President Donald Trump "changed its position" on the Ukraine conflict and became "less supportive" of Kiev. The French president insisted on further assistance to the government of Vladimir Zelensky, claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not stop if he is allowed to defeat Ukraine.

When asked to comment on Macron's statements by journalists on Thursday, Lavrov mentioned Hitler and Napoleon, describing them as the French president's "predecessors, who also wanted to fight Russia." The two European dictators sent their armies into Russia in 1812 and 1941, respectively, but ended up suffering crushing defeats.

The difference is that Hitler and Napoleon "said directly: 'We must conquer Russia, we must defeat Russia.' And he [Macron], apparently, wants the same thing, but for some reason says that we must fight Russia so that it does not defeat France; that Russia is creating a threat to France and Europe," he stressed.

The minister refuted the French leader's claims that Moscow has plans to attack Western Europe, calling such notions "unreasonable." 

"President [Vladimir] Putin has said many times that this is absolute nonsense. I think that any sane person would understand that [by launching its military operation] Russia only wants to eliminate the root causes of the situation created by the West in Ukraine," he explained.

Lavrov also said that Moscow views Macron's statement about widening France's nuclear umbrella as a "threat towards Russia." 

"If he considers us a threat, if he is calls a meeting of the chiefs of staff of the [Western] European countries and Britain; if he says that it is necessary to use nuclear weapons; if he prepares to use nuclear weapons against Russia - this is, of course, a threat," he insisted.

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Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the French president's speech as "highly confrontational," saying that it has shown that France does not want peace, but "is thinking more about war, about the continuation of the conflict."