MINSK, November 29. /TASS/. The Normandy Four ministerial meeting has yielded no breakthrough solutions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday after talks with his counterparts from Germany, France and Ukraine in Minsk.
"The Minsk agreements are miring. It is even impossible to agree the sequence of steps," he said. "It is still impossible to agree the sequence of steps in the sphere of security and political reforms."
He said Ukraine is to blame for more violations in the security sphere and in what concerns weapons withdrawal than the self-proclaimed republics.
At the same time, Lavrov stressed that the Normandy Four casts no doubts at the leaders agreements reached in Berlin and Paris earlier this year.
The issue of possible deployment of an armed mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was not discussed, Lavrov added after talks with his counterparts from Germany, France and Ukraine.
"Today, no one raised this issue," he said. "No one even thinks about deploying an armed OSCE or any other mission."
Sergey Lavrov and Frank-Walter Steinmeier are now holding a bilateral meeting, the Russian foreign ministry said.
Lavrov also said that efforts towards the settlement in southeastern Ukraine will be continued both in the Normandy Four format and within the Contact Group which includes representatives of all the parties.
Apart from that, Lavrov drew attention to the situation over the Contact Group’s economic subgroup. "Today, we focused special attention on the Contact Group’s economic subgroup which is tasked to deal with such major issues as water supplies and which has been practically blocked, with no meetings held since August due to Ukraine’s disagreement over the representatives delegated there from Donbass," the diplomat said. "Our common decision today was to resume this work."
Among other topics discussed at today’s meeting, according to the Russian foreign minister, were disengagement of forces near Stanitsa Luganskaya and violations during the process of weapons withdrawal. "We cited OSCE statistics today. The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission reports much more such violations committed by the Ukrainian army," Lavrov said.