Putin and his counterpart Zelensky will meet in Paris on December 9 to discuss how to end the five-year conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The office of the President of France on November 15 said that Russian President Vladimir Putin, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend the 4-party summit in Paris to find a solution ending conflict in Ukraine.

Macron, who is leading a peace effort in Ukraine, hopes to hold a conference in September, but the plan was not possible due to a series of obstacles. However, France recently said there have been "major advances" in negotiations between the parties, leading to the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops and separatists from some crucial conflict areas.

According to Elysee Palace, the conference will promote a series of new steps to implement the Minsk agreement to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine. President Zelensky confirmed the timing of the conference, adding that Macron had a phone call with him.

After being elected in May, President Zelensky pledged to bring peace and regain control of Kiev over separatist regions.

The Ukrainian army and the separatists last week made the final phase of the withdrawal, seen as a prerequisite for the summit. The five-year conflict between the two sides in Donetsk and Lugansk, eastern Ukraine, has killed more than 13,000 people.

Conflict in eastern Ukraine occurred after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, making relations between Moscow and the West worse. Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russia of providing financial and military support to the separatists, but Moscow denies the allegations.

Ahead of the conference, Russia, Ukraine and the separatists agreed on a roadmap to allow the establishment of a special status for separatist territories if they conducted free and fair elections under the Ukrainian constitution. Macron said Russia could rejoin the G8 group of developed countries if the Ukraine conflict was resolved.

The four-party summit aimed at resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine was called the "Normandy Quartet", after the heads of the four countries first met in Normandy, France in 2014. The most recent conference took place in Berlin in October 2016, before Macron took office and Petro Poroshenko was president of Ukraine.