Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday denounced the “lies” spread by the Russian government to justify a war in Ukraine, but said he would remain in contact with President Vladimir Putin to try and obtain a ceasefire. Macron, who has led European efforts to avert war by visiting Putin in Moscow last month and mediating over the phone between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Russian leader, squarely put the blame on hostilities on the Kremlin. “It is alone, betraying his international commitments one by one, that President Putin chose war,” Macron said in a nationwide address to the...