French President Emmanuel Macron declared Russia to no longer be NATO's enemy and called for closer ties with the Kremlin days before a NATO meeting.

His new remarks echo sentiments he expressed earlier this month, which have been heavily criticized, where he claimed that NATO was “brain dead” and in need of a new strategy to replace the United States' leadership.

“NATO is an organization of collective defense. Against what, against who is it defending itself? Who is our common enemy? This question deserves clarification,” Macron said after talks in Paris with Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's secretary-general on Thursday, according to the Times.

He argues that new talks with Russia are vital to European security and has pushed for European involvement in a new deal to replace the defunct Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty between the U.S. and Russia.

“Is our enemy Russia or China as I sometimes hear?” he added at a press conference with Stoltenberg. “Is it the job of the Atlantic alliance to name them as enemies? I don’t think so. Our common enemy, it seems, is the terrorism which is striking all our countries.”