The meetings on Monday came amid a flurry of diplomatic activity to end Russia’s nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine.
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Ahead of the meeting, Macron’s office said the two presidents would discuss the conditions necessary for a “fair and lasting peace”.
Speaking to La Tribune Dimanche newspaper on Sunday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the aim of the meeting was to “take the dialogue forward”.
“Peace is within reach, if (Russian President) Vladimir Putin gives up his delusional hope of reconstituting the Soviet empire by first subjugating Ukraine,” he said.
EU ministers
Reporting from Brussels, where a meeting of EU defense ministers took place on Monday, also attended by Ukraine’s Defense Minister Denis Shmyhal, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Alhelbara said Kiev’s European allies want to see “a deal where there is no notion of handing over part of Ukraine to Russia, because that’s the price they have to pay for a permanent deal”.
Alhelbarra said the bloc is concerned about the possibility of a “blanket amnesty”, which would prevent Russian authorities from being prosecuted for crimes committed in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Zelensky said on social media that he had briefed Finnish President Alexander Stubb on “signals we received from the US side” after a day of talks on Sunday between Ukrainian and US negotiators in Florida.
The Ukrainian leader also confirmed that he had spoken to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO chief Mark Rutte and said, “These are important days, and a lot can change”.
Zelensky described talks between US and Ukrainian negotiators in the United States on Sunday as “very constructive”, but said there were “some difficult issues that still need to be worked out”.
For Kiev, it marks progress on US President Donald Trump’s original 28-point peace proposal, which he and his European allies see as favorable to Russia.
On Sunday, the US President announced on Air Force One that “there’s a good chance we can get a deal”.
However, he also said that Ukraine had “some tough little problems”. Two days earlier, Zelensky’s chief of staff and Ukraine’s top negotiator, Andriy Yermak, resigned amid a corruption scandal in the energy sector.
needs more work
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the Florida talks as a success, but added that “there is more work to be done”.
“There are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there’s another party involved here that has to be part of the equation, and that will continue this weekend when Mr. Witkoff travels to Moscow,” he said.
Reporting from Kiev, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands said Ukrainians would be pleased that Rubio, whom they see as the Trump administration’s most Ukraine-friendly senior official, was currently leading the talks.
“Since Rubio is driving the car right now, things are going well for the Ukrainians,” Challands said.
However, he stressed that caution is needed because of Trump’s unpredictability and because Russia has not yet responded to the latest peace plan draft.
Sticking to his maximalist demands, Putin has said he will end the war only if Ukrainian forces withdraw in 2022 from four of its regions, which Russia has illegally occupied but does not fully control.
The Russian president said last week, “If they don’t back down, we’ll get it by force. That’s all.”
US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will discuss the latest draft peace deal with Putin when they meet in the Russian capital on Tuesday afternoon.
Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, said Russians are generally not enthusiastic about their travels.
“On the one hand, polls show that most Russians really want an end to the conflict as soon as possible,” Shapovalova said. “On the other hand, there’s not much excitement about Steve Witkoff’s visit,” he said.
On the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Monday that its troops had captured the settlement of Klinov in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The announcement could not be independently confirmed.
Deadly attack on Dnipro
Elsewhere, at least four people were killed and 40 others were injured, 11 of them seriously, in a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Monday, according to Vladislav Gavinenko, acting governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Dnipro Mayor Boris Filatov said the attack damaged four residential high-rise buildings and an educational facility in the city centre. He also informed that search and rescue operations are going on.
Ukraine said Russia launched 89 strike and decoy drones overnight on Sunday, before the Dnipro attack, of which 63 were shot down or jammed.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it shot down 32 Ukrainian drones overnight in 11 regions of the country as well as the Sea of Azov.
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