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to Paris was intended to rekindle the Normandy Four talks, which has been the main vehicle for international mediation.
"I want to get the four of us" together to discuss "the issue of the security situation in eastern Ukraine and the de-occupation of our territories", Zelenskiy said after the meeting with Macron and Merkel.
Zelenskiy said that the Normandy Four process was “in a coma” and that "I think it is Macron who can give [the Normandy format] artificial respiration," the Ukrainian president told Le Figaro before the meeting.
"Ukraine's sovereignty is under threat," Macron's office said heading into the talks, adding: "All our work is aimed at avoiding an escalation and defusing tensions."
Zelenskiy also visited Turkey, where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threw his weight behind Ukraine
and surprised observers by declaring Turkey didn't recognise Russia’s annexation of the Crimea peninsula in 2014, incurring Moscow's ire. Russia responded by cancelling charter flights to Turkey from Russia that could cost Turkey up to $5bn in lost tourism revenue at a time when it is desperate for hard currency earnings.
Zelenskiy also urged NATO to speed
up his country's membership of the application to join the military treaty on April 6, saying it was the only way to end fighting with pro-Russia separatists during a meeting with NATO Secretary- General Jens Stoltenberg on April 6.
Neither NATO nor the EU have ever offered Ukraine the prospect of joining either club and joining the military alliance is a red line Russia would not tolerate Ukraine crossing, although it is more ambivalent about Ukraine’s desire to join the EU.
However, both organisations have welcomed Ukraine’s turn to the West and have warm relations with Ukraine. That has left Kyiv in a no-man's land
of disrupted relations with Russia but with no real prospect of joining the West. Zelenskiy suggested this limbo be brought to an end and both NATO and the EU make their intentions on Ukraine’s eventual membership application clear.
"We cannot stay indefinitely in the EU and NATO waiting room," Zelenskiy told French daily Le Figaro. "If we belong to the same family, we must live together. We cannot go out together forever, like eternal fiancées; we must legalise our relations."
Kerch closed again
This is the second time Moscow has closed off the Kerch straits, after an incident in November 2019 that shut down the key
shipping route ended with the Russian navy capturing a Ukrainian navy boat that failed to stop when hailed in the strait.
Opinion remains divided as to if the incident was a provocation by former President Petro Poroshenko designed to drum up more support from his Western allies, or an act of military aggression by a belligerent Russia. The upshot was that the straits were closed for several weeks, hamstringing Ukraine’s merchant fleet and hurting its foreign trade regime.
Tensions between Moscow and Kyiv have flared again after Russia sent thousands of troops to the Ukraine border, and the new US sanctions have only poured oil on the fire.
"From 21:00 on April 24 until 21:00
on October 31, passage through the territorial sea of the Russian Federation for foreign military ships and other state vessels will be halted," the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited a defence ministry statement as saying.
The restrictions will affect the western tip of Crimea, the peninsula's southern coastline from Sevastopol to Hurzuf, and a "rectangle" off the Kerch peninsula near the Opuksky Nature Reserve, the Moscow Times reports.
The final area is near the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea to the
Ukraine President Volodymyr #Zelenskiy meets French President Emmanuel Macron.
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