The remarks, which compared the attacks in Paris with the Russian invasion of east Ukraine, caused a flurry of negative remarks from French journalists on social media, Ukraine Today reports.

An English-language Ukraine specialist followed by thousands on the Twitter social media microblog also chimed in.

Russia launched an undeclared hybrid war against Ukraine in February 2014. Russian special forces seized the Crimean Peninsula and state buildings in east Ukraine before sending thousands of troops and paid mercenaries to carve up eastern and southern Ukraine and create a new state called Novorossiya (New Russia).

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