French President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants to include European partners in a resumption of dialogue with Russian leader Vladimir Putin nearly four years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
He spoke after dispatching a top adviser to Moscow last week, in the first such meeting since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
"What did I gain? Confirmation that Russia does not want peace right now," he said in an interview with several European newspapers including Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung.
"But above all, we have rebuilt those channels of discussion at a technical level," he said in the interview released today.
"My wish is to share this with my European partners and to have a well-organised European approach," he added.
Mr Macron said dialogue with Mr Putin should take place without "too many interlocutors, with a given mandate".
The French president said last year he believed Europe should reach back out to Mr Putin, rather than leaving the United States alone to take the lead in negotiations to end Russia's war against Ukraine.
"Whether we like Russia or not, Russia will still be there tomorrow," Suddeutsche Zeitung quoted the French president as saying.
"It is therefore important that we structure the resumption of a European discussion with the Russians, without naivety, without putting pressure on the Ukrainians - but also so as not to depend on third parties in this discussion."
After Mr Macron sent his adviser Emmanuel Bonne to the Kremlin last week, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said Mr Putin was ready to receive the French leader's call.
"If you want to call and discuss something seriously, then call," he said in an interview to state-run broadcaster RT.
The two presidents last spoke in July, in their first known phone talks in over two and a half years.
The French leader tried in a series of phone calls in 2022 to warn Mr Putin against invading Ukraine and travelled to Moscow early that year.
He kept up phone contact with Mr Putin after the invasion but talks had ceased after a September 2022 phone call.
Mother and child killed in Russian attack in Ukraine
It comes as Russian forces killed an 11-year-old girl and her mother in bomb strikes on the embattled city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, according to local authorities.
Seven more people were wounded in the attack on the industrial hub that Russian forces are slowly clawing their way towards.
"The dead are an 11-year-old girl and her mother. Among the wounded is a 7-year-old girl," regional official Vadym Filashkin wrote on social media.
He posted images showing several buildings on fire and windows blown out from rooms scattered with debris.
Mr Filashkin said rescue workers were at the scene and that the number of casualties was still being determined.
"Every day in (the) Donetsk region brings new and ongoing war crimes by the Russians," he added.
The wider Donetsk region, where Sloviansk is located, is one of five regions the Kremlin claims as part of Russia.
In 2014, Kremlin-backed separatists briefly captured Sloviansk amid the war in eastern Ukraine that erupted following nationwide pro-democracy protests and the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
Ukraine retook control after a few months and has held it since, with Russian forces around 15 kilometres from the city.
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Sloviansk had a population of around 100,000.
Separately, Russian-installed officials in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia said two people had been killed by Ukrainian forces over the last 24 hours.
