TOP HEADLINES

· French President Emmanuel Macron has said the West should consider Russia's need for security guarantees, including fears that "NATO comes right up to its doors," if his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agrees to negotiations about ending the Ukraine war. READ MORE BELOW

· However, a top U.S. diplomat said Putin was not sincere about peace talks while Russia was taking the conflict to a new level of "barbarism" by trying to shut down Ukraine's civilian energy infrastructure.

· Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has held talks with his Belarusian counterpart. Belarus says it will not enter the war, but President Alexander Lukashenko has previously deployed troops with Russian forces inside his own borders, citing threats to Belarus from Kyiv and the West.

· Russia is considering how to respond to a price cap on its oil, the Kremlin said, after Western powers reached a deal for a $60 per barrel limit on Russian seaborne crude exports.

· Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the agreement was not serious and would do little to deter Russia from waging its war, while Moscow said it would not accept the Western cap.

· Officials in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson have announced civilians will be helped to evacuate from parts of Russian-occupied territory on the east bank of the Dnipro River amid fears of intensified fighting.

· Britain's defense ministry has said Russia will likely try to encircle the Donetsk Oblast town of Bakhmut with tactical advances to the north and south.

· Sweden has deported a man with alleged ties to Kurdish militants, an apparent attempt to meet Turkey's demands that Stockholm crack down on proponents of the Kurdish movement in the Nordic country in return for NATO membership.

· Britain's National Crime Agency has arrested a "wealthy Russian businessman" on suspicion of money laundering at his "multi-million pound residence" in London, part of the UK's purported crackdown on corrupt oligarchs.

· Several people tried to steal a Banksy mural in Kyiv by slicing a battle-scarred wall, but the people were spotted and the artwork of a woman in a gas mask and dressing gown is now under police protection. Several arrests were made. 

IN DETAIL

Considering Russia's security demands

The West should consider how to address Russia's need for security guarantees if President Vladimir Putin agrees to peace talks, according to French President Emmanuel Macron.

In an interview with French TV station TF1 made during his state visit to the U.S. this week, Macron said Europe needed to prepare its future security architecture.

"This means that one of the essential points we must address – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia," Macron said.

"That topic will be part of the topics for peace, so we need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table," he added.

Russia and the U.S. have both said this week they are open to talks, though President Joe Biden said he would only talk to his Russian counterpart if the Kremlin chief showed genuine interest in bringing the war to a conclusion. Ukraine says negotiations are possible only if Russia pulls out all of its troops from the country.

Many in Ukraine and the West are strongly opposed to any negotiation with Putin if they include any concessions after nearly 10 months of war, especially as Ukraine has made gains against Russian forces in the past three months.

But Macron's comments suggest he is sympathetic to Moscow's need for security guarantees – a demand Moscow says the West failed to address in the run-up to the war.

On February 8, just weeks before Russia's attack on Ukraine, Putin said at a joint news conference with Macron in Moscow that Russia would keep trying to obtain answers from the West to its main security demands: no more NATO enlargement; no missile deployments near its borders; and a scaling back of NATO's military infrastructure in Europe to 1997 levels.

The U.S. said at the time that Moscow's demands were "non-starters."