Emmanuel Macron completed a whirlwind diplomatic mission to Moscow and Kyiv on Tuesday, claiming he had received personal assurances from Vladimir Putin that Russia would not worsen the crisis over Ukraine, reports The Guardian.
Speaking after talks with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv, Macron said Putin had made clear during discussions on Monday that he would not be the one to escalate tensions. The standoff could take months to resolve, Macron added.
Zelenskiy, however, said he was sceptical about his Russian counterpart’s apparent commitment to peace. “I do not really trust words. I believe that every politician can be transparent by taking concrete steps,” Zelenskiy said at a joint press conference with Macron. “Openness was great” so long as it was “not a game”, Zelenskiy added.
Macron insisted on Tuesday that the Minsk agreements signed by Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 at a time of military defeat were the best way out of the conflict. But Kyiv and Moscow do not agree on what the deal means.
The Kremlin says Zelenskiy’s government needs to recognise pro-Moscow separatists in the eastern territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. Kyiv insists the separatists need to disarm before any political solution can be found, and officials believe implementing the accords could lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian state.
Asked about Ukraine’s reluctance to implement the Minsk accords, Putin had responded on Monday night with a sinister-seeming phrase: “Like it or not, you’ll have to tolerate it, my beauty.”
Switching to Russian and addressing Putin directly on Tuesday, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was indeed “tolerant” because it was not replying to Kremlin provocations. “There’s wisdom in this tolerance,” he said.
It was not clear whether two days of intense French diplomacy had brought about modest concessions by Moscow, as Macron intimated, or nothing of the kind. French officials said Putin had pledged not to carry out any new “military initiatives”, after six hours of frank talks with Macron.
But the Kremlin quickly moved to ridicule any suggestion that it had made concessions.