Ukraine, Russian leaders meet for Paris talks, prospects for peace remain bleak

After a slight easing of tensions, Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russia's Vladimir Putin are all set to meet face to face along with the French and German leaders for the first time in three years. This meeting has been made possible after the easing of tensions. But even so, the prospects of peace remain somewhat bleak.

There doesn't seem much hope of reconciliation

The five-year-old conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces has also claimed the lives of 13,000 people in east Ukraine. Kiev has long been under a lot of political pressure and given Moscow's stubborn nature the hopes of a long-lasting solution are unlikely according to diplomats. Zelenskiy won the elections in April by promising that he would bring an end to the conflict, but he is under a lot of pressure from his opposition and therefore cannot give Moscow too much ground during the negotiations.

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The conflict between Ukraine and Russia began with the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula back in 2014.
According to Vladimir Frolov who is a former Russian Diplomat, there is very little chance that anything concrete will come out of these talks because the positions of both the countries are irreconcilable. This meeting is more of a test to see where both the countries stand vis-a-vis the ongoing conflict.

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The Crimean peninsula was annexed by the Russian federation in 2014. The annexation of Crimea was followed by wider Russian military intervention in Crimea. Ukraine and many world leaders have condemned the Russian annexation of Crimea and found it to be a violation of International Law. Russia has always denied that what took place in Crimea is an annexation. He has stated that the actions and series of events have merely been the result of the referendum and following the principle of self-determination of people. In 2015, the Russian Prime Minister announced that Crimea had been fully integrated in Russia.