KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st September, 2018) A ministerial meeting of the Normandy Four group (France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine) can take place in the near future, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Friday.
"[The Normandy format] is on ... [The meeting of ministers] will take place, probably not literally in the nearest time, but soon," Klimkin told the Novoye Vremya radio.
He reiterated that the meeting of the political directors of the Normandy Four states was planned for the second part of September, who would discuss the issue of UN peacekeepers deployment to the Ukrainian crisis-torn region of Donbas.
He noted that Kiev insisted on the deployment of a peacekeeping mission throughout the whole territory of Donbas.
Kiev has long been seeking the deployment of the UN peacekeepers in Donbas. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his support for the idea, but stressed that peacekeepers should only ensure the security of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring staff. Meanwhile, Kiev has advocated wider powers of peacekeepers and their deployment on a large territory up to the Ukrainian border with Russia.
The conflict in Donbas started in 2014, when Ukrainian authorities launched a military operation against the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics that refused to recognize the new government in Kiev, which came to power as a result of what some Donbas residents considered a coup. In February 2015, the warring parties signed the Minsk peace accords to end the hostilities in the region. Despite this, the situation has remained tense, with both parties accusing each other of ceasefire violations.
