Macron announced increased pressure on Russia in the coming days.

Western countries will increase pressure on Russia in the next eight to ten days to achieve an end to military action, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with Paris Match.

The French leader said he discussed this with US and Ukrainian presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, at the Vatican on April 26, the day of Pope Francis's funeral.

"I told him [Trump] again that we need to be much tougher with Russia to push Vladimir Putin toward a ceasefire," Macron said. The French leader believes he has convinced the Americans "of the possibility of escalating threats and possibly imposing sanctions to force the Russians to agree to a ceasefire."

Macron noted that “it would be wrong to put pressure only on Ukraine.”

Earlier on April 28, the White House reported that Trump was increasingly disillusioned with both the Russian and Ukrainian presidents and was calling on them to sit down at the negotiating table . Commenting on the ceasefire declared by Russia during the 80th anniversary of Victory Day, Washington indicated that Trump was seeking a permanent ceasefire. On April 26, the Republican himself admitted that Putin was unwilling to end the conflict and again threatened Moscow with secondary sanctions. Two days earlier, Trump condemned Russian strikes on Kyiv and expressed confidence that Putin would listen.

At a meeting with Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff, Putin stated that Russia is ready to resume negotiations with Ukraine without any preconditions, the Kremlin reported. The Russian Foreign MinisterSergey Lavrov noted that Moscow is ready to reach an agreement on Ukraine , but there are details that still need to be agreed upon.

On April 28, in an interview with O Globo, Lavrov stated that Moscow's position on the settlement was "well known." Russia insists on Ukraine's non-accession to NATO, international recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as Russian regions, as well as security guarantees. "The agenda includes the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, the lifting of sanctions, lawsuits, and arrest warrants, and the return of Russian assets frozen in the West," the minister added. Putin voiced the same conditions last summer.

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