Resuscitation of diplomacy: Steinmeier and Ayrault travel to Kiev

14.09.2016

The foreign ministers of Germany and France will arrive in Kiev on September 14th. The European diplomats are expected to discuss with their Ukrainian colleagues a solution of the protracted conflict in the Donbass.

The implementation of the Minsk agreements

In a statement on the eve of the trip, Frank-Walter Steinmeier stressed once again the need for compliance with the Minsk agreements of all parties of the conflict. However, in circumstances where Kiev has no control over a significant part of the groups fighting against the armed forces of DPR and LPR , this is not possible.

An attempt to restore the "Normandy format"

European diplomats have repeatedly called for the restoration of "Normandy format", which had been discontinued after the attempted sabotage by the Ukrainian security services in the Crimea.  The press-secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, said last week that Moscow does not rule out this possibility, but "for this the necessary conditions must come into fruition."

Goodwill gesture

During a telephone conversation on September 13th, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said to Steinmeier that Moscow had asked the DPR and LPR to observe the ceasefire on the contact line. As a result, the heads of the people's republics Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitskiy made a joint statement on the establishment of unilateral "quiet mode". However,  provocations from the Kiev side have not stopped.

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