Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday for talks, as part of a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at brokering the terms for a potential ceasefire in the nearly four-year-old conflict in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy's visit to Paris followed a meeting between Ukrainian and U.S. officials in Florida on Sunday, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as productive.
The two sides have worked to make revisions to a proposed U.S.-authored plan that was developed in negotiations between Washington and Moscow but criticized as being too weighted toward Russian demands.
Those criticisms were perhaps most vehement from Ukraine’s European allies who, while welcoming U.S. peace efforts, pushed back on key tenets of the plan.
Ahead of his meeting with Zelenskyy on Monday, Macron’s office said the two leaders would discuss conditions for a “fair and lasting peace.”
Later, Macron's office said he and Zelenskyy held talks with other European partners including leaders from Britain, Germany, Poland, Italy, Norway, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Also included in the talks were European Union officials Antonio Costa and Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Macron and Zelenskyy also had phone calls with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Macron’s office said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has downplayed his administration's original 28-point peace framework, which would have imposed limits on the size of Ukraine’s military, blocked the country from joining NATO and required Ukraine to give up territory, as a “concept” to be “fine-tuned.”
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would meet with U.S. presidential envoy Witkoff on Tuesday afternoon.
Witkoff’s role in the peace efforts came under scrutiny last week following a report that he coached Putin’s foreign affairs adviser on how Russia’s leader should pitch to Trump on the Ukraine peace plan.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas on Monday expressed concern that the U.S.-Russia talks might end up with Ukraine having to make yet more concessions, like being pressured to surrender its territory.
Peskov on Monday condemned Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure over the weekend, including an attack on an oil terminal owned by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, CPC, and another that targeted two tankers in Turkish waters.
Ukraine confirmed on Saturday it carried out the attacks.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Russian forces had destroyed 32 Ukrainian drones overnight. The drones were shot down over 11 Russian regions, as well as the Sea of Azov, the ministry said.
A Russian missile strike around midday on Monday killed four people and wounded 40 others, 11 critically, in the eastern city of Dnipro, according to the head of regional administration Vladyslav Haivanenko.
The strike hit the city center, damaging four residential high-rises, an educational facility and the storage facility of a humanitarian organization, said Dnipro's mayor, Borys Filatov, adding that search and rescue operations were ongoing.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia had fired 89 strike and decoy drones overnight Sunday before the attack on Dnipro, of which 63 drones were shot down or jammed.
Overall in November, Russia fired 100 missiles of various types and 9,588 reconnaissance and strike drones into Ukraine, according to the Air Force’s monthly report published Monday.

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