Paris talks also involving France and Germany see Russia pushing for Ukraine to take back legal control of territories

Russian and Ukrainian officials have expressed cautious optimism following a long bout of negotiations in Paris to end the conflict in east Ukraine which has raged for a year and cost more than 8,000 lives.

A Kremlin spokesman described the talks – which involved the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany – as “businesslike”, although Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko cautioned that the conflict would only end when “the last piece of Ukrainian territory was freed”, according to Interfax Ukraine.

“There is a hope that despite the delays in implementing [the Minsk agreement], steps have been made and overall we can talk about a positive mood that we could have this meeting today and discuss important things,” said the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, after the talks.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Angela Merkel and François Hollande in Paris. Before the Ukraine summit each held bilateral talks with Vladimir Putin on Russia’s intervention in Syria. Photograph: Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images

When the four leaders last met in Minsk, Belarus in February, they spoke for 16 hours in marathon overnight talks which resulted in a new ceasefire agreement to augment the first Minsk agreement signed in September last year. The ceasefire was largely ignored for months but in recent weeks there has been almost full quiet on the front lines, as Russia pushes for Ukraine to take back legal control of the territories. Russia has denied military involvement in the conflict despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

François Hollande, the French president, said the elections planned for October in the rebel territories, which Kiev had denounced as illegal, would “probably” not take place yet and said he hoped Ukraine would pass a new law which allowed the vote to take place and would guarantee a full amnesty for all those taking part. This suggestion, which could effectively see rebel military commanders elected under Ukrainian law, will be unpalatable to many in Kiev.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pro-Russian separatists take part in military exercises in the Donetsk region in the week before the summit. Photograph: Aleksey Filippov/AFP/Getty Images

The Donetsk rebels had planned to hold elections on 18 October, while the Luhansk statelet had set elections for 1 November. The compromise plan would involve the Ukrainian parliament passing a law stating these elections were indeed legal, but they would be organised by the rebels. Aside from the emotional issue of the amnesty, Ukraine had been uneasy about this suggestion, feeling it would push the territories back inside Ukraine legally and financially, but Kiev would still have no political control.



The long-planned talks were overshadowed by Russia’s dramatic entry into the Syrian conflict this week, with Vladimir Putin holding bilateral meetings with Merkel and Hollande before the four-way meeting.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vladimir Putin leaves the Élysée Palace after the summit on 2 October. Photograph: Sergei Chirikov/EPA

It has been a busy diplomatic week for Putin, who has not been a frequent guest in western capitals over the past year; starting at the UN general assembly in New York on Monday, where Putin gave a speech calling for a global coalition against Islamic State and spent 90 minutes in talks with the US president Barack Obama.



The four leaders met alone for an hour and a half, before moving to broader format talks that included ministers and aides for the rest of the discussions.

As Russia enters war in Syria, conflict in Ukraine begins to wind down Read more

With the rebels, Kiev and Moscow all fatigued by military action, some kind of imperfect and uneasy solution appeared possible in the runup to Friday’s meeting.



In an interview last week in Donetsk, rebel leader Alexander Khodakovsky told the Guardian that the military stage of the conflict had come to a close, even if it did not please radical voices on all sides.

“We will be de jure inside Ukraine but will live by our own laws and leaders. Depending on how the political situation inside Ukraine and Russia develops, the next stage will be either increased stability leading to some kind of lasting settlement, or renewed conflict.”