Moscow would like to receive concrete proposals from Paris and Berlin for discussion within the framework of the Normandy format, Maria Zakharova, an official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), wrote on her Telegram channel.
“What are they? I would like to hear from the partners specifics: what proposals did they make and which Russia refused? A request to read out the entire list, “she wrote, commenting on the message that” a representative of the German Foreign Ministry said that Berlin and Paris made several specific proposals for a meeting of foreign ministers in the “Normandy format”, but the Russian Federation allegedly refused. “
Earlier today, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said during a briefing that Germany and France had been working for several months to continue the negotiations of the Normandy Four (Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France) and presented several “concrete proposals” for a meeting of foreign ministers. In Moscow, they refused to participate in these negotiations, the official said, urging the Russian side “to return to the negotiating table and continue discussions in the approved formats and in accordance with agreed principles,” RIA Novosti wrote.
On November 8, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that he refused to meet in the “Normandy format” on November 11 due to a busy schedule that day. The head of the department clarified that he had notified the partners about this, but they did not offer an alternative date and insisted on the already announced one.
In addition, the minister said that on October 29, Moscow sent to Berlin, Paris and Kiev its vision of what the draft final document of a possible ministerial meeting in the “Normandy format” might look like. An answer “in essence” was not received at that time, and a meeting in order to see each other, take a picture together and thereby send a signal that the “Normandy format” is working, Russia does not need, Lavrov summed up.
Today, the foreign minister said that Russia will take part in the meeting in the “Normandy format” only after Kiev fulfills the Minsk agreements. On November 17, the Russian ministry published Lavrov’s correspondence with the Foreign Ministers of France and Germany Jean-Yves Le Drian and Heiko Maas in connection with the fact that “recently the position of Russia, its role in the internal Ukrainian settlement and approaches to a possible ministerial meeting in the“ Normandy format “Subject to distortion.”
In September 2014, the trilateral contact group (plenipotentiaries of Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE) signed the first Minsk agreements, which ended the active part of the hostilities in southeastern Ukraine, which had been going on since April of the same year. The second Minsk agreements stopped the escalation of the conflict in February 2015 in the Debaltseve area. In December 2019, in Paris, the leaders of the Normandy Four adopted a communiqué, according to which the Minsk agreements on the settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine “continue to be the basis of the format’s work.”
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