Follow us on:   

German-Russian-French-Ukrainian joint document in the works
February 7, 2015, 8:42 am

Vladimir Putin met with Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and President of France Francois Hollande at the Kremlin on 6th February 2015 [PPIO]

Vladimir Putin met with Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and President of France Francois Hollande at the Kremlin on 6th February 2015 [PPIO]

Even as the US moves towards arming the Ukrainian military, Moscow on Saturday said Germany, Russia and France are working on the draft of a likely joint document for the implementation of the Minsk Accords to resolve the Ukraine conflict that has killed more than 5000 people.

A tripartite meeting on the Ukraine crisis involving Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel ended in Moscow early Saturday with a commitment to work towards a joint document.

“Joint work is underway to prepare a text for a possible joint document on implementing the Minsk Agreements based on the suggestions formulated by the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany. The document will include proposals from the President of Ukraine, as well as suggestions drawn up during today’s meeting and added by the President of Russia,” said a Kremlin statement.

The Minsk agreements were aimed at committing the Kiev government and the pro-independence militants to an immediate ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, but failed when the two sides broke the five-month truce in January.

On Sunday the troika and Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko would summarize the results of discussions through a telephone conversation.

Kremlin press-secretary Dmitry Peskov said this was being done “for presenting this text and these proposals for approval to all parties to the conflict.”

“The work will go on and its preliminary results will be summarized next Sunday, in a Normandy format telephone conversation at the summit level,” added the statement.

He described the just-ended talks as “meaningful and substantive”.

Putin, Hollande and Merkel held closed-door talks for about five hours on Friday night to try and find a way out of the crisis.

Earlier, Merkel and Hollande paid a brief visit to Kiev for a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Meanwhile Washington has begun openly hinting it could arm Ukraine’s military.

US General Philip Breedlove, the top military commander in NATO, implied that he favored sending weapons, telling a security conference in Munich that the West should use “all the tools in the toolbag”.

 

TBP and Agencies