With over 100,000 troops massed near the borders of Ukraine, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron will be meeting with the leader of Russia, being the first-ever top western leader to do so ever since the crisis kicked off in December last year.
The President of France, Emmanuel Kant was seen in Moscow yesterday in the hopes to find a common ground with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine and NATO crisis. At the start of this week, the Western agencies are worried about an invasion of the pro-western neighbour.
Tens of thousands of Russian troops have already been deployed near the borders of Ukraine, Macron will become the first Western leader to meet with Putin ever since the crisis kicked off in December. The Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz will also be meeting with the president of the United States of America, Joe Biden in Washington, as the leaders of the West have decided to take a united front in their biggest showdown with Russia ever since the cold war ended.
As per the officials of the United States, Russia has amassed over 110,000 military troops near the Ukrainian borders and the nation is on track to deploy a large enough force of around 150,000 soldiers to prepare for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the middle of this month. Russia is still adamant on denying that it has no plans of attacking or invading Ukraine and has also put forward some demands of its own for the guaranteed security of Ukraine and to ease the tensions.
Macron will be visiting Kyiv on Tuesday to talk with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, as per the reporters on his plane. It was stated that the French President was reasonably optimistic about going into the talks with both the parties of the crisis. Macron also said that he was not expecting any short-term solution to the crisis but he was willing to take the security concerns of Russia seriously. Macron added that they must try to see where the points of disagreements lied and the possible points of convergence had to be seen as well to come up with an equation that might make the de-escalation of the tensions possible.
He further said that NATO would never accept a profound change in the policies and no compromise could be agreed upon on the questions of Ukraine without the consent of Ukrainians. Russia has accused the West, specifically the United States and NATO of ignoring the legitimate concerns for the security of Russia.
Moscow has been demanding a permanent ban on Ukraine (former Soviet Republic) from joining the United States-led alliance and has also asked that the military should roll back its presence in Eastern Europe. The spokesperson of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov has called the talks between Putin and Macron very important but he has also suggested that nobody should expect a major step forward as the situation is too complex for a decisive breakthrough to happen in a single meeting.
