MOSCOW: Russia on Friday summoned French envoy to Moscow and launched a formal complaint over Paris’s alleged growing involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.
Russia’s foreign ministry in a statement said that ion 19 January, French Ambassador P. Levy was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry and presented with evidence of France’s growing involvement in Ukraine conflict.
The development comes days after Russia claimed a strike on French mercenaries.
Russia on Wednesday claimed it had targeted a group of French fighters in a long-range strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
“On the evening of 16 January, the armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a precision strike on a temporary deployment point of foreign militants in the city of Kharkiv, the core of which were French mercenaries,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile a drone strike near the Russian-Ukrainian border in the Bryansk region resulted in a fire at an oil depot on Friday, regional governor, Alexander Bogomaz said.
On Thursday, Ukraine took credit for a drone attack in the northern Leningrad region, which borders Finland and is situated almost 1,000 kilometers away from the border.
Earlier French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Paris will deliver 40 SCALP long-range cruise missiles as well as hundreds of bombs to Ukraine to help Kyiv to fight war with Russia.
