Zelensky-Putin meeting: Macron argues for Geneva

Zelensky-Putin meeting: Macron pleads for Geneva Keystone-SDA

The meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin should take place in Europe, according to French President Emmanuel Macron. He is calling for it to be held in Geneva.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

In an interview broadcast on the French channel TF1 Info on Tuesday, Macron, when asked whether the meeting announced after the meeting between US President Donald Trump and several European heads of state and government in Washington should take place in Europe, said: “More than a hypothesis, it is even the collective will”.

“It will be a neutral country, so maybe Switzerland, I’m in favour of Geneva, or another country. The last time there were bilateral talks was in Istanbul,” he recalled. On Monday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggested that the meeting should take place in Rome.

+ How Switzerland is caught up in Russia’s propaganda machine 

With regard to the security of Ukraine, the French head of state announced that he would organise a meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, “the 30 countries working on security guarantees to keep them informed of the decisions”, together with the UK on Tuesday lunchtime.

“In the same breath, concrete work will start with the Americans, and so from Tuesday our diplomatic advisers, ministers, chiefs of staff will start work to see who is ready to do what,” Macron said. Ukraine will make the concessions it considers right and good, he added.

“In any case, we should be very careful when we talk about recognising the law. Let’s not allow any recognition of the law, i.e. that countries that are guarantors of the international order can say we can take territories by force, because then we open a Pandora’s box,” he warned.

Translated from French by DeepL/ts

How we work 

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]