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Normandy Quartet summit’s program being agreed — Kremlin spokesman

The presidential press secretary refrained from answering the question whether Russian and Ukrainian presidents will have a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Normandy Quartet summit in Paris

Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. Russian president’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov has refrained from answering the question whether Russian and Ukrainian Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky, will have a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Normandy Quartet summit in Paris.

"The program [of the summit] has not been agreed yet. It is being coordinated among the four capitals," he said on Monday in reply to a TASS question. "Presidential aides are in contacts. What is clear now is only that a summit in the Normandy format will take place."

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Final document of Normandy Quartet’s summit being drafted — Kremlin spokesman

"Anyway, the four presidents will meet in the Normandy format and all the rest will take place on the summit’s sidelines — these modalities are being agreed," he said.

A summit in the Normandy format (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine) will be held in Paris on December 9. Leaders of the four nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, will discuss ways of settling the Ukrainian crisis.

Talks in the so-called Normandy format over Ukraine began in June 2014. During special ceremonies on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the allied landings in Normandy during World War II, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany for the first time discussed ways of settling the conflict in Donbass. A number of telephone conversations and summit meetings, as well as contacts between foreign ministers have followed. The latest summit in the Normandy format took place in Berlin in October 2016. Such a long break between the summits is explained by Kiev’s failure to implement the agreements reached at the previous summits.

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