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Zelenskiy meets Macron as Russia engages in a diplomatic dance over a possible Biden-Putin summit
Ben Aris in Berlin
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and for a restart of the four-way talks under the Normandy Format during a trip to Paris to meet with
his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, on April 16.
Macron met Putin in person for the first time during the first Normandy Four summit in December 2019, where he began negotiating an end to the fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region against the Kremlin-sponsored rebels. However,
a follow-up meeting never happened due to disappointing progress in the negotiations and the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Now as the world begins to emerge from almost a year of lockdown Zelenskiy
is attempting to revive the talks with Russia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also participated in the meeting via video link.
The three leaders also ended their Friday meeting by urging Russia to withdraw extra troops amassed on the Ukrainian border and in occupied Crimea.
Zelenskiy told reporters that he also hoped to restore the ceasefire in war- torn eastern Ukraine at an upcoming meeting of four advisors to the leaders of Russia, France and Germany on April 19.
The ceasefire "was productive at first, but then unfortunately" ended, Zelenskiy told reporters.
The meeting came a day after US President Joe Biden slapped fresh sanctions on Russia for its threatening military build-up along Ukraine’s border and a shopping list of other complaints.
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Kremlin played down any possible negative economic impacts from the new sanctions. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied to reporters on Friday, when asked if the Russian economy would weather the new restrictive measures imposed by Washington:
“[Russia’s] macroeconomic stability is fully ensured, our regulator is acting moderately and successfully, the efficiency of our economic bloc is recognised internationally.
“We see no reason to doubt this effectiveness,” the Kremlin official added, TASS reported.
The markets welcomed the sanctions as some of the mildest of the possible alternatives, targeting two dozen officials and banning US investors from participating in the Russian ruble bond primary market, but not choosing the
US president Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor of the United States.
Russia also announced it was restricting access to the Sea of Azov and banning military and state-owned vessels passing through the Kerch straits, controlled by Russia, until October. The restrictions could bottle up two of Ukraine’s largest ports that are responsible for handling the cargo of some of its best hard currency earners such as grain, steel and coal exports.
And tensions ticked up another notch on April 17 when Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained a consul of the Ukrainian General Consulate in St. Petersburg for "activities incompatible with his diplomatic status." The consul was accused of obtaining classified information from the databases of law- enforcement agencies and the FSB, the FSB’s press office told TASS.
“The Normandy Four process is in a coma and I think it is Macron can give it artificial respiration"
far more damaging option of banning them from buying the bonds on the secondary market.
Russia responded angrily and announced a range of retaliatory measures, but pointedly the Kremlin seems to have accepted Biden’s sanctions as measured and has not ruled out the possibility of
a summit between the two leaders.
Moscow expelled 10 diplomats and imposed visa bans on a number of senior US officials including John Bolton, a well-known Russia hawk and formerly
"On April 16, the Federal Security Service apprehended Ukrainian diplomat-consul of the Ukrainian General Consulate in St. Petersburg Alexander Sosonyuk red-handed upon receiving classified data from the databases of Russian law-enforcement agencies and the FSB," the press office said in a statement.
Zelenskiy-Macron meeting
Zelenskiy has been on the road in the last few weeks trying to drum up international support for his confrontation with Russia. The trip