The Kremlin on Monday said there were no concrete plans for a summit over Ukraine between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden, after the French president said the two leaders had agreed to a meeting in principle.

A summit might offer a possible path out of Europe’s biggest military crisis in decades, and financial markets edged higher on the glimmer of hope for a diplomatic solution. [MKTS/GLOB]

However, both Washington and Moscow played down hopes of a breakthrough, and satellite imagery appeared to show Russian deployments closer to Ukraine’s border than before.