Reuters: Macron's top aide holds talks in Kremlin, Ukraine top of the agenda
Emmanuel Macron and Emmanuel Bonn (Photo: CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON / EPA)

The most senior diplomat of the French president Emmanuel Macron, Emmanuel Bonn visited Moscow on February 3 to hold talks with Russian officials. About this writes Reuters, citing an informed interlocutor and two diplomatic sources.

Bonn, who has been heading Macron's diplomatic team since 2019, met with officials in the Kremlin, the first source said.

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He did not provide any further details, except to say that the purpose of the meeting was to have a dialogue on key issues, the most important of which was Ukraine.

The French president's administration neither confirmed nor denied the information about the talks. However, they pointed out that, as Macron reported to journalists on February 3, the discussions are being conducted at the technical level in "full transparency" and in agreement with the president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and key European colleagues.

Two diplomatic sources said that the allies had been informed of the initiative and that Bonn had held talks with Yuri Ushakov, an aide to the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on foreign policy issues.

Bonn is a diplomatic adviser to the French president. In particular, he, along with officials from the United Kingdom and Germany, participated in the negotiations between Ukraine and the United States in Switzerland on a peace plan in the fall of 2025.

Earlier, Macron announced plans to resume direct talks with Moscow in December 2025. At the time, Zelenskyy noted that he had told the French president about the need to "fight" for the participation of the United States in peace talks.

Recently, on February 1, the head of French diplomacy, Jean-Noël Barrot, said that Paris has never ruled out direct dialogue with Moscow to protect their own interests.

  • The last time the French president and the Russian dictator spoke was in July 2025, when their call lasted more than two hours, and one of its topics was the Russian-Ukrainian war. It was their first conversation since 2022.
  • Interlocutor LIGA.net in the Office of the Ukrainian president reported that after this call, Macron contacted Zelenskyy to inform him about the conversation.
  • Bloomberg's sources said that during a call with the French president, Putin rejected the idea of a ceasefire.