European leaders held a call to discuss Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would revise his country’s negotiating position, claiming Ukrainian drones targeted a residence of his.

“Our work to ensure robust security guarantees continues unabated,” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said Tuesday on the X platform. He said that Kyiv’s allies in the so-called Coalition of the Willing would convene next week.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Polish Premier Donald Tusk and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also joined the call.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday confirmed Russia would “toughen” its negotiating stance following an alleged attack against a presidential residence in the Novgorod region, more than 400 kilometers (249 miles) northwest of Moscow, but wouldn’t publicly disclose how, according to the Interfax news agency.

“Almost a day passed and Russia still hasn’t provided any plausible evidence to its accusations of Ukraine’s alleged ‘attack on Putin’s residence,’” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Tuesday on X. “And they won’t. Because there’s none. No such attack happened.”

Still, several countries, including India, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan, issued statements expressing concern or condemning the alleged attempted strike.

European leaders spoke following a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent days as U.S. President Donald Trump pushes to resolve Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and fulfill a pledge he made for his return to office. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Sunday and the U.S. and Russian leaders held two calls, including one in which Putin told Trump about his decision to revise his negotiating position.

Tusk, speaking after the European leaders’ call, said that “peace has appeared on the horizon for the first time since the start of this full-scale war.” He praised a U.S. commitment to security guarantees for Ukraine after the conflict ends.

Yet the Kremlin’s comments on its shifting negotiating stance reflect Putin’s refusal thus far to back away from maximalist demands, including for territory in the east of Ukraine that Moscow hasn’t been able to seize militarily. Putin on Monday in a televised meeting with Russia’s army command highlighted what he described as advances on the battlefield in Ukraine and ordered his forces to continue efforts to take more territory.

Ukrainian officials have toiled over the last few weeks to revise a 28-point draft plan that the U.S. proposed but was seen as overly favorable to Russia. The latest version has 20 points, although Moscow has warned that the plan includes elements it won’t accept, including on the size of Ukraine’s post-war military.

Ukraine is seeking a meeting with European partners and Trump in January, Zelenskyy said earlier, followed by a separate meeting with Russian officials “in one format or another.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday said that Ukraine attempted to attack the presidential residence with 91 drones, adding that Russia would retaliate and that targets had already been selected.

Trump addressed the purported attack while speaking to reporters in Florida on Monday, saying that Putin had told him about it during their discussion. The U.S. president, seeming to side with Putin, said he was “very angry.”

Zelenskyy has dismissed the Russian claims as a “new lie” and warned that Moscow could be using it as an excuse to prepare an attack on government buildings in Kyiv.

“We are moving the peace process forward,” Merz said after the European leaders’ call in a post on X. “Transparency and honesty are now required from everyone – including Russia.”

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