Ukraine president meets frontline troops ahead of Putin talks

• Zelensky and Putin will meet in Paris on Monday for the summit, with the French and German leaders mediating, in a bid to revive efforts to end Europe's only active war.
• While no breakthrough is expected, the holding of the summit is seen as a hopeful sign after high-level talks have stalled for the last three years.
• The withdrawal of heavy weapons, the restoration of Kiev's control over its borders, wider autonomy for separatist-controlled territory and the holding of local elections.

CHASIV YAR: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited frontline troops on Friday as he geared up for his first face-to-face talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin on the five-year conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Zelensky and Putin will meet in Paris on Monday for the summit, with the French and German leaders mediating, in a bid to revive efforts to end Europe's only active war.

Ahead of the talks, he headed to the snow-covered town of Chasiv Yar, close to the frontline, to pin medals on servicemen.

"Believe me, it's a lot easier to hold talks feeling your strength and your support behind me," he told the troops.

While no breakthrough is expected, the holding of the summit is seen as a hopeful sign after high-level talks have stalled for the last three years.

Since it broke out in 2014, the conflict between Kiev and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 13,000 people, forced more than a million from their homes and battered the country's economy.

It has also deeply strained ties between Russia and the West, with the United States and European Union imposing sweeping sanctions on Moscow over its annexation of Crimea and support for the separatists.

Monday's talks will be the first in three years in the so-called Normandy format, which aims to put in place accords agreed in Minsk by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany in February 2015.

The Minsk accords called for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons, the restoration of Kiev's control over its borders, wider autonomy for separatist-controlled territory and the holding of local elections.

But the deal was never implemented and talks stalled under Zelensky's predecessor Petro Poroshenko.

"We want the new Ukrainian government and the upcoming Paris summit to take decisive steps to put the Minsk accords in motion," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Rome.

"The signals are however contradictory," he said.