“Russia launched an offensive towards Ukraine. It’s a territorial warfare, the likes of which we thought had disappeared from European soil,” Macron mentioned on the second leg of a visit to Africa to reset France’s relations with the continent, the place many countries are former French colonies.

“I communicate on a continent that has suffered colonial imperialism,” he mentioned at a press convention with Benin President Patrice Talon.

“Russia is among the final imperial colonial powers” because it determined to “invade a neighbouring nation to defend its pursuits,” he mentioned.

Russia despatched troops into Ukraine on February 24, sparking a warfare that has killed hundreds and displaced tens of millions.

The French chief is on a tour of three African nations — Cameroon, Benin and Guinea-Bissau.

In Cameroon on Tuesday, he mentioned the archives on French colonial rule in Cameroon could be opened “in full” and requested historians to make clear the interval’s “painful moments”.

French colonial authorities brutally repressed armed Cameroonian nationalists earlier than the nation’s independence in 1960.

Tens of hundreds of supporters of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC) get together died by the hands of French colonial troops and of the primary post-independence president, Ahmadou Ahidjo.