The political advisors to the leaders of Russia, Germany, Ukraine, and France met in Berlin yesterday for nine hours, but came out of the meeting without even agreeing on an interpretation of the 2015 Minsk agreements on resolving the conflict in southeastern Ukraine. “Unfortunately, almost nine hours of negotiations ended without any visible, tangible results expressed in documents,” said Russian Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Dmitry Kozak, reported TASS. “We tried to agree on the final statement of our negotiations, proceeding from the previous meeting in Paris on Jan. 26. We [at the time] agreed that the Normandy format should overcome all differences regarding the interpretation of the Minsk agreements at any cost since the Normandy format is a control mechanism when it comes to the Minsk negotiation process in the Contact Group. But today it wasn’t possible to overcome these differences.”
“I did not see [France and Germany’s] readiness to put pressure on Kiev [on implementing the Minsk agreements]. I saw attempts to find some convenient position for Ukraine to continue the policy that it has been pursuing over the previous eight years,” he said.
According to Kozak, Russia regrets that partners from Germany and France did not demonstrate “a firm position” during the current round of negotiations that it is necessary to implement the Minsk agreements “in accordance with the spirit of these agreements in the political part.”
