French President Emmanuel Macron will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on February 7 and the leader of Ukraine the next day to discuss the standoff between the two countries, hoping to ensure Europe gets a say in broader US-Russian negotiations over Ukraine.
Macron's office said he would meet Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv a day after his meeting with Putin at the Kremlin.
The French president has said that finding a negotiated path towards de-escalating tensions over Ukraine was a priority, even as the United States said it was sending 3,000 extra troops to Poland and Romania as Russia amassed troops near Ukraine.
Macron held separate phone calls with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders on Thursday to try to make progress on the status of the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine as part of efforts to defuse tensions, his office said in a statement.
The Élysée Palace said Macron underscored to Putin and Zelensky the importance of discussing the conditions to reach strategic balance in Europe, in order to reduce tension on the ground and guarantee security on the continent.
'Throw of the dice'
France, Russia and Ukraine have had numerous phone conversations over the past 10 days that culminated on Friday with confirmation of Macron's forthcoming visit to Moscow and Kyiv.
"The Russians gave us signals so we have to jump on them ... In a way we're calling their bluff," a senior French official told Reuters. "But whether we can get anything, nobody can predict. What it does is help to gain time and reduce these tensions."
Macron aims to capitalise on limited progress made during four-way "Normandy format" peace talks on Ukraine in Paris last month. He hopes to get a commitment from Putin to continue the talks and dial down tensions on the Russia-Ukraine border, two sources close to Macron said.
"We're heading to Putin's lair, in many ways it's a throw of the dice," one source close to Macron told Reuters.
A French presidential official told reporters on Friday that Macron would see what could be negotiated to reduce Russia's military build-up so that it was in a less threatening posture, thus helping to start defusing tensions.
The Kremlin has made clear the priority of the talks will be Moscow's demands for security guarantees from the West.
'NATO will not get involved militarily in Ukraine'
The trip, coordinated with Washington and Berlin, is part of diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions after Russia massed some 100,000 troops near Ukraine and demanded NATO and US security guarantees, including that NATO never admit Kyiv as a member.
In an interview with FRANCE 24 on Friday, Mircea Geoana, NATO's deputy secretary general, said the Western alliance had observed "a further mobilisation of Russian military presence in and around Ukraine, in Belarus, in a suspicious and very unusual way".
While NATO has strengthened its eastern flank in response to Russian troop movements, most recently with the announcement of US reinforcements in eastern Europe, Geoana said the alliance ruled out sending combat troops to Ukraine.
"NATO will not get involved militarily in Ukraine. We support Ukraine in many other ways; individual allies support Ukraine," Geoana told FRANCE 24's Talking Europe programme. He said NATO's deterrence efforts aimed to "demonstrate to the leadership in the Kremlin that (...) an additional military intervention in Ukraine is a net loss for Russia."
NATO's deputy chief played down the prospect of Ukraine joining the alliance "any time soon", while also defending the alliance's open-door policy. He also questioned the wisdom of Russia's strategy regarding Ukraine, noting that Moscow's threats were alienating Ukrainians and pushing them into the arms of the West.
"Ten years ago only 20 percent of Ukrainian people wanted to join NATO and the EU; today we have 60-something percent," Geoana said. "So in a way we hope that Russia will realise that they get the opposite of their intentions."
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)
