Ukraine desires to hold a Normandy group meeting only for asking Germany and France to exert pressure on Russia to change the Minsk Agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th September, 2021) Ukraine desires to hold a Normandy group meeting only for asking Germany and France to exert pressure on Russia to change the Minsk Agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.
Earlier this day, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Kiev was ready to hold the meeting of the Normandy Four foreign ministers at any time, with efforts intensifying to organize one this fall.
"The only goal of such initiative [for Ukraine] is to beg Berlin and Paris to put pressure on Russia to start modifying, as they say, the Minsk Agreements," Lavrov said following a meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid.
Although Kiev repeatedly expressed its willingness to hold various conferences, Russia along with Germany and France cannot understand Ukraine's stance at these meetings, the Russian foreign minister added.
Lavrov said that if the Normandy group continues its work, this means providing conditions necessary for the full implementation of the Minsk Agreements.
The Ukrainian foreign minister calls on all parties of the Normandy group to hold a meeting as soon as possible, while other members of the Kiev administration claim that they refuse to implement the agreements, something Lavrov called "foreign policy schizophrenia."
The conflict in Donbas between the Ukrainian government and the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk republics has been going on since 2014. The Minsk Agreements, designed to find a political settlement to the conflict, were negotiated by the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine comprising the Normandy group in February 2015.
