President Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel are mediators in the negotiations on a possible peace agreement.

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyj, met on Monday face-to-face in Paris at a summit with France and Germany's leaders.

Earlier there had been a number of bilateral discussions in the French præsidentpalæ as part of the preparation of the summit, which aims at a solution of the conflict in Ukraine.

Zelenskij and Putin arrived separately at the Elysée Palace, where they both held bilateral discussions with president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of the actual summit on a peace agreement.

All four leaders participating in the summit, which occurs within the framework of the so-called Normandy Format, where the previous meeting was way back in 2016.

the Negotiations are based on a peace plan at a meeting in Minsk in 2015.

Since Russia in the 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula, has the relationship between Russia and Ukraine has been very tense.

But the Ukrainian relatively newly elected president, who is a former comedian, said at his inauguration after being elected in may, that he would focus on the dispute in the east, where around 13,000 people have lost their lives.

the Conflict escalated in 2013, when Ukraine's then-president, Viktor Yanukovich, postponed the signing of a long-awaited trade and association agreement with the EU.

the Agreement would in practice mean a more pro-western Ukraine, which would thus also mean a greater distance to Russia.

the Postponement caused great anger in the country's capital, Kyiv, where thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in the winter of 2013 to 2014.

It ended in several deaths of demonstrators before the parliament in the February overthrow of Yanukovych. The situation led to the separatist løsrivelser in eastern Ukraine. Russia is accused by Ukraine and the West to support the prorussiske separatists in Østukraine with weapons and other supplies.

Later in the year in 2014 beleaguered Russian troops into the Crimean peninsula and annexed the area, located in southern Ukraine.

/ritzau/AFP