French President François Hollande met Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukraine crisis during a brief stopover at a Moscow airport on Saturday, reports Reuters.
Putin looked nervous as he greeted Hollande, who was on his way back to France after a trip to Kazakhstan and is the most senior Western leader to visit Russia since it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March.
"Mister President, I decided we should discuss problems regarding the Ukraine crisis," Hollande told Putin via an interpreter at Vnukovo international airport, adding that he hoped for progress towards an end to the crisis.
Putin said he was confident Hollande's brief visit could help secure progress in the crisis, in which the West has imposed sanctions on Russia and relations between Moscow and the West are at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War.
In brief comments while reporters were present, Hollande did not say whether he had brought any new proposals for ending fighting between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine which has killed over 4,300 people since April.
The French leader said during his trip to Kazakhstan that he, Putin, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and German chancellor Angela Merkel should "start the process of reducing tension" together.
Hollande indicated he wanted to address some of the issues raised in a speech by Putin on Thursday in which the Kremlin leader accused "enemies of yesterday" of trying to bring a new Iron Curtain down around Russia.
While visiting Kazakhstan for talks with president Nursultan Nazarbayev, a Putin ally, Hollande said Putin should look to the future rather than the past to help ease tension over the Ukraine crisis.