French President Emmanuel Macron’s new boxing photos have aroused “mockery” as social media users ask if he was trying to send a message to his counterpart Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Macron’s official photographer, Soazig de la Moissonnière, posted two black and white images of the president, showing him hitting a punching bag with gritted teeth and bulging biceps, on Instagram on Tuesday.

Many were questioning the timing of the portraits, which came after Macron called on Europe to ramp up its response to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

The French president said in an interview last week, “If we leave Ukraine alone, if we let Ukraine lose this war, then for sure Russia will threaten Moldova, Romania and Poland.”

Broadcaster CNews said of the pictures that “we see the head of state ready to fight, his gaze fixed on the punching bag.”

Sandrine Rousseau, an opposition Greens lawmaker, reposted the photo on X with the comment, “What misery of politics!”

“What a defeat for progressivism. And what poverty of political communication.”

French President Emmanuel Macron does not rule out the possibility of deploying Western troops in Ukraine.

Éric Anceau, a history professor at the University of Lorraine, wrote on X that the photos were “part of the neo-populist virility.”

And Journalist Jonathan Bouchet-Petersen said the photos were a “rather dismaying communication choice.”

He said it would have been preferable if the photo really were the product of a cheeky social media user as he had initially assumed.

And the French daily newspaper Le Figaro said the photos had “aroused much mockery.”

Macron, 46, is the youngest French head of state since Napoleon Bonaparte.

“Yet Napoleon could boast genuinely extraordinary achievements. By contrast, images of Macron working out, or baring his hairy chest, inspire only titters,” wrote the British newspaper Telegraph.

Source: Presstv