PARIS (AP) – The leaders of France and Germany are demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops recently deployed at the border with Ukraine, the German chancellor’s office said on Friday after the two heads of state held security talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Friday, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined them via teleconference. Ukrainian president seeks support from European Union and NATO rally amid growing tensions between his country and neighboring Russia.
Merkel’s office said the three “discussed the security situation along the Ukrainian-Russian border, as well as in eastern Ukraine.” They shared their concern about the build-up of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine … They demanded the withdrawal of this troop reinforcement to aggravate the situation. ‘
According to French and German officials, Macron and Merkel underlined their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The talks come as Ukraine and the West have sounded the alarm over the past few weeks over the concentration of troops along Russia’s western border, a buildup that the US and NATO have described as the largest there since 2014. Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists fought for seven years in eastern Ukraine.
“We hope that the visit of President Zelenskyy can give a new momentum” to negotiations with Russia and Ukraine and finally a political solution to the conflict, a French official at the French presidency said on condition of anonymity after the meeting.
“We want to understand positions and tensions and see how we can find the narrow paths between the (different) views,” the official said.
France and Germany, which helped negotiate a peace deal signed in the Belarussian capital Minsk in February 2015, are working to prepare for further talks involving the leaders of Ukraine and Russia.
Their last meeting, which took place in Paris in December 2019, helped ease tensions but could not make progress with a political resolution that would end the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Zelenskyy called on France and Germany to take action. “They always support our integrity, our sovereignty … But I have said very directly and very honestly that we must move very quickly now,” the Ukrainian leader told a news conference.
“I think it’s not just our problem, it’s about the security of Europe,” Zelenskyy said.
Speaking about a possible meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy said: “If there is a dialogue, the cannons are silent.”
“I think it can help solve some problems … If such important countries do not speak, others will suffer,” he added.
In a call with Putin this week, Biden expressed concern about Russia’s build-up and called on Russia to ease tensions. The Biden government on Thursday increased pressure on Russia and announced a series of new sanctions.
More than 14,000 people killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine, which erupted after Russia’s annexation in 2014 of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula. Violations of a shaky ceasefire have become more frequent in recent weeks.
The Kremlin has said it hopes Macron and Merkel will persuade Zelenskyy to abide by the ceasefire agreement and implement a 2015 peace agreement for eastern Ukraine signed in Minsk, Belarus’ capital.
The Kremlin expects the French and German leaders to ‘exercise their influence and carry out the need to quietly stop challenging action along the line and to emphasize the importance of the unconditional observation of the ceasefire’, Dmitry said. Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said Friday.
Major General Victor Hanushchyak, Deputy Commander of Ukraine’s joint forces operation in the east of the country, said that the probable purpose of Russia’s recent actions ‘was to put an end to the efforts to reintegrate the temporarily occupied territories’. to prevent separatist control.
Despite what he described as escalating frontal shelling and a military build-up by the Russia-backed side, Hanushchyak said: “there were no signs of direct preparation of the enemy for active offensive action.”
In the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, near the front line with the apartheid-controlled area, Vitaly Barabash, head of the local military-civilian government, told the AP on Friday that ‘people hear shots, it does not pass, people are a little scared … but there is no panic. ”
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AP journalists Dmytro in Avdiivka, Ukraine, and Frank Jordans in Berlin, Germany, contributed to the story.