PARIS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2019) The Normandy Four summit has ended in Paris, the last two hours of talks were held during a working dinner, a Sputnik correspondent reports.
In total, the talks in Paris lasted about five and a half hours, including the one-and-a-half-hour talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Now, Putin, Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will hold a joint press conference.
The Monday summit was the first Normandy talks since October 2016, and the first time Zelensky and Putin met face-to-face.
The Normandy Four format was established in June 2014 to mediate the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Then, the leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine met on the sidelines of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing operations in Normandy.
On February 11-12, 2015, the Normandy Four leaders held marathon 16-hour talks in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, which resulted in a package of measures adopted to alleviate the Ukraine crisis, commonly referred to as Minsk II protocol. The Minsk agreement stipulated, among other points, a ceasefire in Ukraine's troublesome southeastern regions (Donbas), a troop and hardware withdrawal, as well as local elections to be held in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics.
