Macron: Putin said Russia won’t escalate Ukraine crisis

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, winks as he shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after a joint news conference in Kyiv on Tuesday. Pic/AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him Moscow would not further escalate the Ukraine crisis.

Macron also said it would take time to find a diplomatic solution to the rising tensions, which represent the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. His remarks on a visit to Kyiv came as the Kremlin denied reports that he and Putin struck a deal on de-escalating the crisis. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that "in the current situation, Moscow and Paris can't be reaching any deals."

Macron met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy amid mounting fears of a Russian invasion. The Kremlin wants guarantees from the West that NATO will not accept Ukraine and other former Soviet nations as members, that it halt weapon deployments there and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe - demands US and NATO reject as nonstarters.

At a news conference after meeting Zelenskyy, Macron said Putin told him Monday that "he won't be initiating an escalation. I think it is important." According to the French president, Putin also said there won't be any Russian "permanent (military) base" or "deployment" in Belarus, where Russia sent a large number of troops for war games. Britain's top diplomat, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, headed to Moscow on Wednesday to try to defuse tensions.

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