French President Emmanuel Macron, following his participation in a meeting hosted by US President Donald Trump at the White House attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders, called for “tougher sanctions” on Russia if the upcoming peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine fail. Macron told reporters that “if this process is rejected, we all agree that sanctions must be tightened, and in any case, a stance must be taken to impose more pressure on the Russian side.” He also confirmed that the possibility of Kyiv conceding territory to Moscow was not discussed at the meeting.

He added: “We did not talk about this topic at all today (…) for two reasons: first, the priority is security guarantees, and second, we said that +this must be discussed at the bilateral and trilateral levels+” meaning in the upcoming summit between the Ukrainian and Russian presidents first, and then in a trilateral summit including the US president.