President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of France Emmanuel Macron and Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel held a videoconference on the preparations for the Normandy format summit. The Ukrainian leader announced this on October 11 on his Twitter page.
According to him, it was also about stepping up negotiations to end the war in Donbass. “France and Germany are in favor of reaching an agreement on agreed consecutive steps that can ensure the establishment of peace,” the politician wrote.
At the end of September, Oleksiy Arestovich, a freelance adviser to the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said that holding the summit in the Normandy format (Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany) is unlikely in the near future. Russia will not agree to this, he noted.
At the same time, the head of the Ukrainian leader’s office, Andriy Yermak, said that Kiev intends to hold negotiations in the Normandy format even under Merkel. According to him, consultations in the Normandy format continue.
For his part, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov noted that so far there is no need to talk about concrete results in terms of the preparation of the summit of the leaders of the “Normandy Four” countries. There is no point in holding a summit for the sake of a summit – it must be well prepared, especially in the face of an acute shortage of previously reached agreements, the Kremlin spokesman concluded.
Since 2014, the Kiev authorities have been conducting a military operation against the residents of Donbass, who refused to recognize the results of the coup d’etat and the new government in Ukraine. At the same time, Kiev blames Moscow for the current situation.
Russia has repeatedly stated that it is not a party to the internal Ukrainian conflict. The issues of its settlement are being discussed in the Minsk and Normandy formats – with the participation of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, France, Germany.