MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/. Progress in the implementation of the Minsk-2 package by Kiev is needed for another meeting of the Normandy Four leaders but currently there is none, Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
"Considerable progress is needed in terms of compensation of the lost time, in terms of demonstrating readiness to implement the Minsk agreements, first of all by Kiev," he told journalists. "So far, regrettably, Kiev is demonstrating no will or readiness to make any visible steps towards the implementation of the Minsk agreement."
When asked which steps Moscow expects Kiev to make, the Kremlin spokesman recommended to read over the Minsk agreements that are available in open sources. "They don’t have many provision, the fingers of one hand will be enough to count them," he said. "Demonstration of readiness to discuss these provisions will be the best way to signal that there is hope that we will be able to begin the implementation [of the Minsk agreements] in a foreseeable perspective. As, regrettably, neither France, nor Germany, nor even Russia can implement any of the provisions I am speaking about. It can be done only by Kiev."
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He added that Russia thinks it "absolutely illogical" to make anti-Russian sanctions dependent on the implementation of the Minsk agreements by Moscow. "The sanction may actually be made dependent only on the implementation of the Minsk agreements by Kiev," Peskov stressed. "It sounds more or less logical."
"Both the Russian president and other members of the Normandy Four are always ready to speak with each other, to meet each other," the Kremlin spokesman went on to say. "But there is no point in holding such meeting just to check it off the agenda. No one is refusing in this case, but any meeting is to be thoroughly prepared as both the process of exchange of opinions and the final result are important as far as a summit meeting is concerned."
Earlier on Tuesday, French President Francois Hollande said that sanctions imposed against Russia over the Ukrainian conflict may be phased out gradually as the Minsk deal implementation advances.