Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky may soon meet Russian president Vladimir Putin again, for the first time since 2019.
A summit in Paris six years ago was the first and only time the two presidents ever met, flanked by French president Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s then-chancellor Angela Merkel. At the time, Putin and Zelensky were looking to hash out a ceasefire deal for war in Donbas in Ukraine’s east, where Russia-backed forces were fighting Ukrainian troops.
The two world leaders are now potentially set for another meeting as part of US president Donald Trump’s bid to end the devastating Ukraine war. However, this is far from set in stone with Putin’s initial suggestion that it could take place in Moscow quickly rejected by the Ukrainian president.
What happened in 2019?
Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists had been embroiled in conflict in Donbas, in Ukraine’s east, since 2014.
Zelensky and Putin travelled to Paris in December 2019 for the Normandy Format Summit, a diplomatic forum designed by French, German, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats after the outbreak of conflict.
The Ukrainian president had been elected just months earlier in spring that year – his first role in political office – beating former foreign minister Petro Poroshenko to the presidency.
The summit in Paris led to progress, but was not groundbreaking. The two sides agreed to implement “all necessary ceasefire support measures” before the end of 2019 and to release all the prisoners of war.
Both sides also expressed their desire to implement the Minsk agreements signed in 2014 and 2015, the first attempt to achieve a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia after Putin’s forces rolled into and took over the Crimean peninsula.
What did the leaders say about each other?
The mood between the pair was chilly at first. There was no public handshake and they are said to have largely avoided eye contact during the meeting. Clean shaven and sporting a suit, 2019 Zelensky cut a strikingly different figure compared to his more familiar appearance now as a war-time leader.
After the summit, Putin hailed the talks as an “important step” towards de-escalation. He expressed what at the time appeared to be cautious hope: “All this gives us the grounds to suppose that the process is developing in the right direction.”
Zelensky also hailed the meeting as a “big step towards peace”.
When he was asked by reporters who he believed had emerged victorious from the exchanges with his Russian counterpart, he said: “I don’t know who (beat) who. I think it would be appropriate to be diplomatic as we’ve just started talking. Let’s say for now it’s a draw.”
What happened afterwards?
Despite a number of prisoner exchanges, the 2019 meeting was not a catalyst for any major long-term change in Russo-Ukrainian relations – and little over two years later Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Several key sticking points remained after the 2019 negotiations.
Kyiv continued to demand the withdrawal of Russian-backed troops and a complete ceasefire, with a return of border control to Ukraine.
Russia insisted that before Ukraine regained control of its eastern border, local elections should be held in the occupied territories. Putin also demanded that Donbas have a special constitutional status in Ukraine, to give it a degree of autonomy.
In January 2022, just weeks before the full-scale Russian invasion, the summit in Paris took place again, but was attended by officials from the same four countries, rather than their leaders.
Senior diplomats met in February 2022 in an attempt to prevent a conflict. After the Russian invasion on 24 February, Zelensky said the invasion had “ruined” the progress made by the Normandy Format.
