The foreign ministers of the Normandy Four countries, which include Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France, will not be discussing the date of the leaders' summit on the Ukrainian crisis settlement during a video conference planned to occur at the end of the week, an informed source told Sputnik on Tuesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th April, 2020) The foreign ministers of the Normandy Four countries, which include Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France, will not be discussing the date of the leaders' summit on the Ukrainian crisis settlement during a video conference planned to occur at the end of the week, an informed source told Sputnik on Tuesday.
A day earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the negotiations on the Donbas conflict between top diplomats from the Normandy Four countries would be held at the end of the week via video conference and the participants were discussing the agenda.
"If of the eight clauses of the Paris communique [adopted by the Normandy Four participants in December], just one was partially fulfilled, what meeting of leaders are we talking about? Before the Paris [summit] was convened on December 9, all the previous agreements had been implemented, and back then the leaders had confirmed that they had been completed. But to meet just to say that the parties [to the conflict] are not doing anything, why?" the source said when asked whether the date of the new Normandy Four summit would be discussed during the video conference.
The source also noted that the initiator of the upcoming ministerial meeting was Germany.
"They are meeting in order to discuss the progress of the Paris agreement's implementation. There is no progress on that, except for just one � a prisoners exchange � therefore everything will be discussed," the source said, adding that political and legal aspects of the Donbas region's special status, as well as the implementation of the Steinmeier formula, would remain a priority.
In October, the Contact Group on Ukraine met in Minsk and signed an agreement for a peace plan dubbed the Steinmeier formula, which envisages a special status for Donbas in exchange for the latter holding local elections in line with Ukrainian law and overseen by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The plan has been received poorly by the public.
In early December, the Normandy Four participants adopted a joint communique that outlined the next steps in the peace process, including an "all for all" exchange of conflict-related detainees, a ceasefire and the coordination of new areas for the disengagement of forces.
