French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed on Tuesday that negotiations on the Minsk peace agreement would continue on Thursday. He met on Tuesday with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss the protracted crisis.
Macron also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. So on Thursday, talks will follow in the Normandy format, with France and Germany as mediators.
According to Macron, the peace agreement is the only sustainable solution and represents the best protection for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. After his double visits to Moscow and Kyiv, he expressed his belief in “concrete solutions” that could lead to a dismantling of the crisis. But achieving such de-escalation requires a new common security architecture for Europe, Macron said.
Zelensky also reacted positively to the negotiations. “Today, we had conversations that were very rich in content and – in my opinion – very productive.” He gave no details on the peace plan but said he expected a Normandy-format summit meeting soon. At the end of January, representatives of the four countries also gathered in Paris.
On Monday, Macron became the first Western leader to visit Putin since the start of the crisis. The French president says he has offered Russia “concrete security guarantees” without making them concrete. And Putin has said his government will do everything it can to try to find a compromise that everyone can live with.
Macron will see German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Tuesday evening. Die” has just returned from a diplomatic trip to Washington.