'You May Not Like It— Deal With It, My Gorgeous'

Now that France's Emmanuel Macron has wrapped up two days of diplomacy on the Russia-Ukraine standoff, is the world a safer place? Hard to say. At one point, Macron suggested he and Vladimir Putin had made substantive progress in their meeting Monday, but the Kremlin quickly pushed back on that notion. Details:

• Hopeful: "I secured an assurance there would be no deterioration or escalation," Macron said of his Monday meeting with Putin, per the BBC. He spoke ahead of meeting Tuesday with Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
• Maybe not: When those comments hit the airwaves, a Kremlin spokesman shot them down, saying that Macron alone could not hammer out such an agreement. “In the current situation, Moscow and Paris could not make a deal," said Dmitri Peskov, per the New York Times. "France is an EU and NATO member," he said, adding that "France is not leading NATO."

• What Putin said: The Russian leader himself suggested there was some progress in his Macron talks. "A number of his ideas or proposals—which it is probably too early to speak about—I see as rather feasible for creating a foundation for our further steps," he said. Reports suggested one such proposal was that Russia would withdraw its troops from Ukraine neighbor Belarus after military exercises finished this month.
• Quite a line: Also in his press conference Monday, Putin referenced a 2015 agreement reached in Minsk that, in his view, gives Russia some sway in Ukraine foreign policy. "You may like it, you may not like it—deal with it, my gorgeous," said Putin, referring to Ukraine's leader. The Times explains it's a "crude expression derived from a Russian rhyme." The Guardian translated the line as "Like it or not, you’ll have to tolerate it, my beauty" and called it "sinister-seeming.'

• Bottom line: "Let’s not be naive," said Macron on Tuesday, per the AP. "Since the beginning of the crisis, France hasn’t been inclined to exaggerate, but at the same time, I don’t believe this crisis can be settled in a few hours, through discussions."

(More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)