MOSCOW, October 22. /TASS/. No replacements will be for the Minsk Accords, even though to a big extent they are not implemented, the Russian president’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the Russian television, while commenting on results of the Normandy Four meeting in Berlin on October 19.
"First of all, we should acknowledge the Minsk Accords, of course, are not implemented. Most provisions, especially the political part, are to be implemented by the Ukrainian side. It is most important that it was confirmed in Berlin there are no alternatives to the Minsk agreements," he said on Saturday.
He said that even Ukraine’s President Pyotr Poroshenko at the past talks acknowledged it, though formerly "we used to hear various claims about some necessary documents, which were some indirect attempts to replace the Minsk agreements."
"This replacement is not going to happen, everyone confirmed, the benchmark is the text of the Minsk agreements," Putin’s press secretary said.
He added, during the meeting Poroshenko touched upon the topic of returning under Kiev’s control territories of Lugansk and Donetsk, which is a provision of the Minsk agreements, but stressed that item was the last in the outlined agreements, and "President Putin every time is reminding about clearly fixed consequences of steps to be observed."
Peskov said, leaders of the four countries agreed to work on a roadmap to settle the situation in Donbass, which foreign ministries of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany are to approve within a month.
"There is no way other than smoothing these areas of misunderstanding, the areas of dispute in understanding of what has been put on paper," Peskov added. "If we have to take that road, we have to do so, in order to come eventually to a stage-by-stage implementation."
The Kremlin’s representative gave for comparison the story of February 2014, when only a day before the coup, the then President Viktor Yanukovich with mediation of French, German and Polish foreign ministers signed a memorandum on peaceful settlement of the conflict in the country.
"Let us not forget and close eyes shamefully at yet another paper, which contained signatures of official European countries, the paper, which a day before the coup in Ukraine, was signed in Kiev in presence of the then President Yanukovich. Back then, that paper remained on hold, for saving our common renommee. It is most important the Minsk agreements are observed fully," he said.