Jean-Luc Melanchon "served as the Kremlin's mouthpiece" on the Donbass issue, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrow said on RTL/Public Sénat.
The presidential candidate from the French Invictus party, Jean-Luc Melanchon, said the day before that the solution to the war in Ukraine may require territorial concessions, especially in the Donbass, where, in his opinion, it is necessary to consult with the population.
"He simply became the Kremlin's mouthpiece. All over the world, the Kremlin is trying to convince the heads of state and government that the Donbass is in fact Russian, and the aggressive war is a war to liberate the Donbass, of course this has an unprecedented seriousness, and in my opinion, will definitively disqualify him from carrying out the role of French Foreign Minister Bar-No.
In a keynote address to more than 20,000 people, Melenchon promised that his government would "deal honestly with the Russian invasion of Ukraine," without specifying how, and called the statements by European leaders "empty talk."
Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is often criticized for questioning the legitimacy of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or condemning attacks by Ukrainian soldiers deep in Russian territory, said he did not agree with "treating the Ukraine peace agreement with territorial concessions without asking the affected population whether they agree to be on this side of the border or on the other side."
"Who has the right to decide whether they [the population] want to be Ukrainian or Russian? " - he said.