(9 Dec 2019) The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France were holding a series of meetings at the Elysee presidential palace on Monday to try to revive a 2015 peace deal in eastern Ukraine that's been largely ignored.
The long-awaited summit in Paris aims to find a way to end the war in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that after five years and 14,000 lives lost has emboldened the Kremlin and reshaped European geopolitics.
The summit is the first meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy.
In the years since, Ukrainian soldiers and Russia-backed separatists have continued to exchange fire across World War I-style trenches along a front line that slices through eastern Ukraine.
A major breakthrough at the summit is unlikely, and Ukrainian protesters in Kyiv are heaping pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy not to surrender too much to Russian President Vladimir Putin at their first face-to-face meeting.
Whatever happens, the summit is the biggest test yet for Zelenskiy, a comic actor and political novice who won the presidency this year in a landslide -- partly on promises to end the war.
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