Kiev is ready for the meeting of foreign ministers of the so-called Normandy Four group on the Donbas crisis settlement, which comprises France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said Friday
KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2019) Kiev is ready for the meeting of foreign ministers of the so-called Normandy Four group on the Donbas crisis settlement, which comprises France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said Friday."This year I told our French and German friends that we are ready for such a meeting, we are prepared for a ministerial meeting ... [German Foreign Minister] Heiko [Maas] spoke with [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov ... I think the meeting ... is still necessary. I am ready to take part in it if all of us jointly with Germany and France can agree on a real agenda," Klimkin told a briefing.
The Ukrainian minister noted that Kiev had suggested holding a meeting in the Normandy format after the November incident in the Kerch Strait, but no agreements on the meeting had been reached so far.
Klimkin said that security in Donbas, the Black Sea and the Kerch Strait as well as the issue of the release of Ukrainians arrested in Russia should be the main topics of these talks.
On November 25, Ukraine's Berdyansk and Nikopol gunboats, and the Yany Kapu tugboat illegally crossed the Russian maritime border as they sailed toward the Kerch Strait, the entrance to the Sea of Azov. Russia seized the Ukrainian vessels and detained 24 crew members after they failed to respond to a demand to stop. After the incident, a criminal case on illegal border crossing was opened in Russia.
The conflict in Donbas started in 2014 and is still ongoing despite the signing of the Minsk peace accords to end the hostilities in the region.
