Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was at the Elysee Palace in Paris on December 1 for talks with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, kicking off another week of intense diplomacy aimed at ending nearly four years of fighting in Ukraine following Russia's full-scale invasion.
The visit, aimed at finding "conditions for a just and lasting peace," came a day after talks in Florida between US and Ukrainian delegations that both sides praised as productive without providing further details.
After the Paris meeting, Zelenskyy said the two leaders had also spoken with US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who is due to hold talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 2. It will be Witkoff's sixth meeting with Putin since January.
"It was an important briefing, and we agreed to discuss more details in person," Zelenskyy wrote on social media. Speaking at a news conference, Zelenskyy said he also expected to discuss key issues with US President Donald Trump.
Macron said US mediation was "a very good thing" but indicated he believed it still had a long way to go. "It's not a complete peace plan. A complete peace plan will require Ukraine at the table, Russia at the table, and the Europeans at the table. It will happen," he said.
'Pivotal Week' For Peace Efforts
"The idea of ending the war by making some concessions to Russia will not work. On the contrary, it would only encourage Russia to continue its expansion in various directions," Mykhaylo Podolyak, an adviser in the Ukrainian presidential office, told Current Time on December 1.
"Some more or less clear compromise version of [US President Donald] Trump's peace initiative will be on the table," he added, referring to a plan proposed by the White House in mid-November that has led to the current burst of diplomacy.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on December 1 that "it could be a pivotal week" for peace efforts.
The initial 28-point US proposal alarmed Ukrainian officials -- and reportedly angered Zelenskyy -- who then held their own talks with Rubio and other US officials in Geneva on November 23.
Those talks resulted in a 19-point plan that leaves several major issues on the table, including the fate of a chunk of Ukraine's Donbas region, Ukraine's NATO aspirations, and a potential cap on the size of Kyiv's armed forces. They were followed by the talks in Florida a week later.
Russian 'Pleasure' At Ukraine Scandal
For Ukraine, an added complication has been the controversy surrounding Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, who has been a key figure in talks.
Yermak -- who has not been charged by investigators and has said he has done nothing wrong -- resigned on November 28 amid an ongoing corruption investigation. He led the Ukrainian delegation in Geneva but was no longer part of the team in Florida.
Podolyak, who was Yermak's adviser, told Current Time that Russia was benefitting from the corruption scandal.
"They always invest in provoking internal conflict in Ukraine, inflating it as much as possible. They understand how to do this, have many information platforms, social networks that they use for this. And, of course, they now watch this internal conflict with pleasure," he said.
Trump on November 30 cautioned that the scandal was not helpful to the peace process, adding that "Ukraine's got some difficult little problems."
Even as the diplomacy ramps up, the killing has raged on.
Ukrainian authorities reported on December 1 that four people were killed and at least 40 injured in a Russian missile attack on Dnipro.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Peskov complained about Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure.
He said a weekend attack on Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) infrastructure was "outrageous given its international significance and the involvement of international partners," including US oil major Chevron.
Kazakhstan, a partner in the project, lodged an official protest with the Ukrainian government over the strike, which it said was "the third act of aggression against an exclusively civilian facility."
In the past, Kyiv has said it has targeted the oil industry in order to deny revenues that finance the Russian war effort.
For its part, Moscow has denied aiming at civilian targets in Ukraine, despite overwhelming evidence of attacks on schools, hospitals, housing, and other facilities since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
