France’s Hollande drops in to visit Putin
MOSCOW — French President Francois Hollande met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin during an impromptu visit to Moscow on Saturday, a rare display of goodwill as tensions remain high over the ongoing conflict in east Ukraine and France’s decision to suspend the delivery of two warships to Moscow.
The French leader’s unexpected stopover in Moscow, as he traveled from neighboring Kazakhstan back to Paris, makes him the only head of state from a major Western power to visit Russia since it annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in March.
The visit — which was held at a Moscow airport rather than at the halls of the Kremlin or Putin’s country residence — comes as Russia’s economy heads toward recession for the first time in six years and Moscow is more isolated than ever over its role in Ukraine.
Putin also struck a more moderate note than expected on the conflict in east Ukraine, where fighting between pro-Russian rebels and Kiev’s forces has claimed at least 4,300 lives since April. Western nations have imposed sanctions on Russia for what they say is its role in providing the militants with personnel and arms, something Moscow denies.
“I very much hope that in the near future we will have a final cease-fire agreement” in east Ukraine, Putin said in televised remarks after meeting with Hollande. Without a fully implemented truce, he said, “it is difficult to picture Ukraine as a territorially integral country, and Russia, as is well-known, supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
In his own remarks televised after the meeting, Hollande said “de-escalation of the Ukrainian crisis is possible,” if the ceasefire agreement, agreed to by both sides in Minsk in September, is fully implemented. “France wants this crisis to end because it is causing suffering, for Ukrainians and because of the sanctions, and because it prevents relations with Russia from proceeding as they should.”
Putin said that the two leaders had not discussed the delivery of two warships, which was suspended by France after coming under intense pressure from its allies to suspend the sale because of tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
On Friday, France’s defense minister said in a TV interview that the delivery of both ships may be canceled if the political situation doesn’t change.
“We proceed from the assumption that (the deal) will be carried out,” Putin said, but added that Russia would “act with understanding no matter how these events develop.”
Hollande’s visit comes at a challenging time for Putin: Russia’s economy and currency have been battered by plummeting oil prices and Western sanctions.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on his official Twitter account Saturday that he had spoken to Hollande by phone about how to resolve the conflict in east Ukraine.
In comments carried by Ukrainian news agencies, Poroshenko said there is a “preliminary” agreement to resume peace talks in Minsk, Belarus, on Tuesday, which is also seen as a day of artillery silence in a deal reached Friday with representatives from Russia, rebels and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Denis Pushilin, permanent representative for truce talks from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, proposed Dec. 12 as a date for negotiations.
Two columns with about 120 military vehicles crossed the border with Russia in the past 24 hours, Defense Ministry spokesman Volodymyr Polevyi said in Kiev on Saturday. Rebels also shelled troops four times near Mariupol on Saturday morning from multiple rocket launchers and mortars, according to the government. Seven servicemen were reported wounded.
The government said Saturday that 93 civilians have been killed since the September truce, a count that excludes additional casualties in rebel-held areas. So far, 1,250 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the conflict, Poroshenko said while visiting front-line soldiers Saturday.
The new Ukrainian government of Premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk, approved by lawmakers last week, needs to adopt a 2015 budget and tax laws complying with International Monetary Fund requirements to qualify for the next $2.8 billion disbursement of its bailout package. Ukraine needs the cash, part of a $17 billion loan program, to repay debt, buy heating fuel for winter and stem the slump of the hryvnia, Ukraine’s monetary unit, of about 46 percent this year.
Information for this article was contributed by Laura Mills and Greg Keller of The Associated Press and by Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Ilya Arkhipov, Stepan Kravchenko, Kateryna Choursina and Volodymyr Verbyany of Bloomberg News.