Negotiations of the Norman Four countries’ foreign ministers (Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany), which took place on Thursday via videoconference, can start the countdown on the implementation of the Minsk agreements to resolve the situation in the Donbass, says the director of the Ukrainian Institute for Policy Analysis and Management Ruslan Bortnik.
At the talks on Thursday, the Foreign Ministers of the Norman Four discussed security issues in the Donbass, as well as the release of prisoners. According to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, the parties instructed the contact group to determine the parameters and the date of the new “speedy” regime of silence in the Donbass.
The head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Dmitry Kuleba, said that the negotiations did not discuss the creation of an advisory council on the Donbass, but listened to the proposals of the Russian Federation. At the same time, the Foreign Ministers discussed the situation with the coronavirus pandemic, the access of the OSCE SMM and the International Committee of the Red Cross to the territories not controlled by Kiev in the Donbass. The parties agreed to continue negotiations to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine in the form of a video conference in four weeks.
“This videoconference recorded a lack of progress in the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Despite the meeting of the heads of the Norman Four countries, the only one in the last three years, and this videoconference can initiate a countdown of the same freezing of the implementation of the Minsk agreements, as we observed during the presidency Petro Poroshenko”, – Bortnik said in a comment.