Macron didn’t call Putin a ‘butcher’ in news conference with Trump

Posts on social media have shared a video of the French president talking about the war in the Ukraine and claimed that it shows him describing Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin as a “butcher”. But that isn’t what the French president actually said.

The clip is from a press conference held by Emmanuel Macron and US president Donald Trump at the White House on 24 February. 

A short clip from the conference has been shared on Facebook and Instagram with the caption: “The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, calls Putin a ‘butcher’ and comments on his ‘war crimes.’

“Donald Trump looks mad his master was insulted.”

But this isn’t quite right. President Macron did not use the term “butcher” to describe President Putin, but was instead referring to the killings of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians in the town of Bucha, in 2022.

In the video, Mr Macron says: “I stopped my discussion with President Putin after Bucha and the war crimes because I considered that—I mean, we had nothing to get from him in the time.”

This wording is audible in the video clip and similar wording was recorded in a transcript of the press conference, while President Macron's reference to Bucha was also included in media reports of the visit.

What happened in Bucha?

At the end of March 2022, after Russian forces withdrew from the occupied town of Bucha, around 30 kilometres north of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, evidence of mass killings of civilians emerged.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office says 637 civilians were killed in the town of Bucha.

Russia denied at the time that it was responsible for civilian executions in Bucha, and the country’s UK ambassador claimed they were “staged” by Ukrainian forces.

However, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights concluded in a report published in July 2022 that there were numerous incidents where the Russian military had disregarded international humanitarian law, and where its actions constituted war crimes. Journalists found evidence of civilians having been killed in the streets before President Putin’s forces left.

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