In early September 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin stated their intention to hold a Normandy format meeting.[9] On 21 September, "continuing bickering" was cited as causing "a political tug-of-war" over the preliminaries to negotiations, as they had been since the Normandy Format meeting in 2016 in Berlin.[10] Also in late September, a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Zelensky in which the latter described the support of France and Germany as lukewarm damaged Zelensky's image in Europe.[11][12][13] On 10 October, Zelensky repeated his statement in a public news conference.[14] On 16 October, French and German leaders decided in favour of another Normandy Format meeting.[15]