French President Emmanuel Macron has told reporters that President Vladimir Putin assured him that Russian forces would not ramp up the crisis near Ukraine’s borders.
“I secured an assurance there would be no deterioration or escalation,” he said before meeting Ukraine’s leader.
However, Russia said any suggestion of a guarantee was “not right”.
Russia has denied any plans to invade Ukraine, but it has assembled more than 100,000 troops near its borders.
US officials believe Russia has assembled 70% of military forces needed for a full-scale invasion.
President Macron arrived in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday after almost six hours of talks with Putin. He said after Monday’s meeting that the coming days would be “decisive” and there would have to be “intensive discussions which we will pursue together”.
Putin hinted progress had been made and that some of Macron’s proposals “could form the basis of further joint steps”, although they were “probably still too early to talk about”.
A source at the Elysée Palace in Paris said that a broader dialogue would be initiated, focusing on Russia’s military units and future talks both with Ukraine and on strategic issues involving “collective security”.
The source also said that the two leaders had agreed that Russia would pull troops out of Belarus at the end of exercises taking place near Ukraine’s northern borders. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no such undertaking had been given, although the troops were expected to return to Russia at some point.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reiterated that Kyiv would not “cross our red lines and no-one will be able to force us to cross them”.
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