Feb 20, 2022: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he is ready to meet Vladimir Putin so that he can find out what Russian President wants and is looking for a “peaceful settlement”, among the growing concern on potential impurity attacks.

Later on Sunday, French President Macron is scheduled to speak to the Russian president via a call. The conversation, scheduled to take place on Sunday, will mark the fifth time the two leaders talk since the start of the year.

Zelenskyy wants to meet with Putin and called for a solution to the crisis. “I do not know what the president of the Russian Federation wants, so I am proposing a meeting,” Zelenskyy told a security conference in Munich, where he also met with US Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday. “Ukraine will only pursue a diplomatic path to a peaceful settlement.”

As tensions across the border rise, violence has escalated in recent days in eastern Ukraine. Fighting has been going on intermittently for years along the line separating Ukrainian forces from Russian-backed rebels, but the recent spate of shelling and bombing could trigger a full-scale war.

According to Ukraine’s military, Ukraine suspended operations at one of the seven checkpoints to territory in the eastern Donbass region due to heavy shelling.

A statement was released by the military saying, “considering the escalation of the situation… and the inability to guarantee the safety of the civilian population” using the checkpoint, the command was suspending its use from 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Sunday “for the period of the threat,”

Incidents of shelling across the line dividing government forces and separatists increased sharply last week, in what the Ukrainian government called a provocation.

On the other hand, the Kremlin said Russia’s strategic nuclear forces conducted exercises under Putin’s supervision on Saturday, which successfully tested hypersonic and cruise missiles at sea. Putin watched the exercises with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on screens from a “center of the situation.”

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron will call Putin on Sunday to try to stop Western forces from invading Ukraine. Over the weekend, civilians were evacuated from the rapidly closed frontline areas where Kyiv said on Saturday that two of its soldiers had been killed in an attack, the first in the conflict in more than a month.

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