What did the Paris summit really deliver?

What did the Paris summit actually deliver? Looking back at 10 December 2019, the day after the leaders met, the answer rested on two points reported at the time: a first face-to-face encounter and a ceasefire pledge.

On 9 December 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel met in Paris for Ukraine peace talks. It was the first time Putin and Zelensky had met, and the first four-way leaders' meeting of this kind since 2016.

Following what was described as a breakthrough in the talks, Russia and Ukraine agreed to implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019. That gave negotiators a concrete deadline of only a few weeks.

The format behind the meeting

The gathering was held in the Normandy Format, a grouping of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France. The four first met informally in 2014, during the 70th anniversary of the D-Day celebrations in Normandy, France. The group later played a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements between 2014 and 2015.

Assessing it

The opinion to be drawn on 10 December 2019 was necessarily cautious. A meeting after a gap of three years was in itself notable, and a dated ceasefire commitment was more specific than a general expression of goodwill. Whether the pledge would hold, however, could only be tested once the end-of-year deadline arrived.

The Normandy Format continued to operate for years afterwards. Its meetings in 2022 failed to deescalate rising tensions before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That outcome was unknown in December 2019, when the Paris talks were measured against a much narrower question: whether a ceasefire agreed on paper would take effect on the ground.