\n<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has met his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in Paris to bolster support for Kyiv, as Ukrainian and European defence chiefs gathered in Brussels for talks centred around Ukrainian and collective security.<\/p>\n
The meetings came on Monday amid a diplomatic flurry of activity to end Russia\u2019s almost four-year-old war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Before the meeting, Macron\u2019s office said the two presidents would discuss the conditions necessary for a \u201cfair and lasting peace\u201d.<\/p>\n Speaking to La Tribune Dimanche newspaper on Sunday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the meeting aimed \u201cto move the negotiations forward\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cPeace is within reach, if [Russian President] Vladimir Putin abandons his delusional hope of reconstituting the Soviet empire by first subjugating Ukraine,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n Reporting from Brussels, where a meeting of the European Union\u2019s defence ministers, also attended by Ukraine\u2019s Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal, took place on Monday, Al Jazeera\u2019s Hashem Alhelbarra said Kyiv\u2019s European allies wanted to see \u201can agreement where there\u2019s no notion of part of Ukraine being handed over to Russia as the price they have to pay for a permanent deal\u201d.<\/p>\n Alhelbarra added that the bloc is worried about the possibility of a \u201cblanket amnesty\u201d, which would prevent Russian officials from being tried over crimes committed in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said on social media that he had briefed Finland\u2019s President Alexander Stubb on \u201cthe signals we have received from the American side\u201d, following a day of talks on Sunday between Ukrainian and American negotiators in Florida.<\/p>\n The Ukrainian leader also confirmed that he had spoken to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO boss Mark Rutte, saying \u201cthese are important days, and much can change\u201d.<\/p>\n Zelenskyy has described talks in the United States on Sunday between US and Ukrainian negotiators as \u201cvery constructive\u201d, but noted that there were \u201csome tough issues that still have to be worked through\u201d.<\/p>\n For Kyiv, it marks progress from US President Donald Trump\u2019s original 28-point peace proposal, which it and its European allies viewed as favourable to Russia.<\/p>\n On Sunday, the US president declared on Air Force One that \u201cthere\u2019s a good chance we can make a deal\u201d.<\/p>\n However, he also said Ukraine has \u201csome difficult little problems\u201d. Two days earlier, Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy\u2019s chief of staff and Ukraine\u2019s top negotiator, resigned amid a corruption scandal in the energy sector.<\/p>\n Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, hailed the Florida talks as a success, but added that \u201cthere\u2019s more work to be done\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there\u2019s another party involved here that will have to be a part of the equation, and that will continue later this week when Mr Witkoff travels to Moscow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera\u2019s Rory Challands said the Ukrainians would be happy that Rubio, whom they see as the Trump administration\u2019s most Ukraine-friendly senior official, was currently leading the negotiations.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause Rubio seems to be driving the car at the moment, things seem to be going OK for the Ukrainians,\u201d Challands said.<\/p>\n However, he stressed that caution was needed because of Trump\u2019s unpredictability and because Russia had yet to react to the latest peace plan draft.<\/p>\n Sticking to his maximalist demands, Putin has said he will end the war only when Ukrainian troops withdraw from four of its regions Russia illegally annexed in 2022 but does not fully control.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they don\u2019t withdraw, we\u2019ll achieve this by force. That\u2019s all,\u201d the Russian president said last week.<\/p>\n US envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump\u2019s son-in-law, will discuss the latest draft peace agreement with Putin when they meet in the Russian capital on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n Russians are generally not enthusiastic about their visit, Al Jazeera\u2019s Yulia Shapovalova said, reporting from Moscow.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the one hand, polls show that most Russians really want an end to the conflict as soon as possible,\u201d Shapovalova said. \u201cOn the other, there\u2019s not much enthusiasm about Steve Witkoff\u2019s visit,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Over on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defence said on Monday that its troops had seized the settlement of Klynove in Ukraine\u2019s Donetsk region. The announcement could not be independently confirmed.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, at least four people were killed and 40 others injured, 11 critically, in a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Monday, according to Vladyslav Gaivanenko, the acting governor of Dnipropetrovsk region.<\/p>\n The strike damaged four residential high-rises and an educational facility in the city centre, Dnipro\u2019s Mayor Borys Filatov said. He also reported that search and rescue operations were ongoing.<\/p>\n Russia launched 89 strike and decoy drones overnight on Sunday before the Dnipro attack, with 63 of those shot down or jammed, Ukraine said.<\/p>\n The Russian Defence Ministry said it had downed 32 Ukrainian drones overnight across 11 of the country\u2019s regions as well as the Sea of Azov.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has met his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in Paris to bolster support for Kyiv, as Ukrainian and European defence chiefs gathered in Brussels for talks centred around Ukrainian and collective security. The meetings came on Monday amid a diplomatic flurry of activity to end Russia\u2019s almost four-year-old war in Ukraine. Recommended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
EU ministers<\/h2>\n
More work needed<\/h2>\n
Deadly attack on Dnipro<\/h2>\n
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