It would be less than fair to suggest that the French President, Emmanuel Macron, has drawn a blank on his mission to Kiev and his meeting with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. According to reports on Wednesday morning, President Macron told reporters that President Putin has assured him that Russian forces would not ramp up the crisis near Ukraine’s borders. “I secured an assurance there would be no deterioration or escalation,” he said before meeting Ukraine’s leader.

However, Russia said any suggestion of a guarantee was “not right”. The Kremlin has denied any plans to invade Ukraine, but it has assembled more than 100,000 troops near its borders. Tensions between Russia, Ukraine and the West come nearly eight years after Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean Peninsula. Moscow accuses the Ukrainian government of failing to implement the Minsk agreement ~ an international deal sponsored by Germany and France to restore peace to the east, where Russian-backed rebels control swathes of territory and at least 14,000 people have been killed since 2014.

While President Macron said there was now the chance to “make these negotiations move forward” between Russia and Ukraine, President Zelensky of Ukraine called on Mr Putin to take serious measures to reduce tensions. “I do not really trust words, I believe that every politician can be transparent by taking concrete steps,” he said. Mr Macron then flew to Berlin, where he joined the leaders of Germany and Poland in expressing joint support for Ukrainian sovereignty. The leaders met as part of a summit of the Weimar Triangle group, formed 31 years ago after the end of the Cold War, to help deal with challenges facing Europe.

Mr Putin has hinted that progress had been made during his first summit with a Western leader since the crisis started. He said that some of Mr Macron’s proposals “could form the basis of further joint steps” although they were “probably still too early to talk about”. While a French official told reporters that the two leaders had agreed that Russia would pull troops out of Belarus at the end of exercises taking place near Ukraine’s northern borders, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denied any deal had been concluded.

President Biden had met the German chancellor Olaf Scholz leader in Washington on Monday and threatened to shut down a key Russian gas pipeline to Germany, called Nord Stream 2, if Moscow invaded Ukraine. Chancellor Scholz ~ on his first trip to Washington since becoming Chancellor and facing criticism for his response to the Ukraine crisis ~ was, however, more ambiguous about the pipeline than Mr Biden.

Western countries have already rejected several of Moscow’s demands, including that NATO must rule out Ukraine becoming a member, and that the organisation reduce its military presence in eastern Europe. Thus, while the game of brinksmanship continues, Mr. Macron’s visit appears to be a significant step forward in Europe’s effort to resolve a crisis that has brought war clouds to its borders