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No accusatory tone in respect of Russia at Paris talks - Kremlin spokesman

Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that It was a working tone

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, December 15. /TASS/. The Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine) summit in Paris on December 9 was held in a working atmosphere, with no routine accusations being voiced against Russia, Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

"Such a tone (accusatory - TASS) was not used. It was a working tone. You see, it is one thing to say it on camera and it’s quite a different thing to utter it in Putin’s face. Few can dare it. So, everyone behaved properly," he said in an interview with the Bolshaya Igra (Big Game) program on Russia’s television Channel One.

Paris summit results

A Normandy Four summit crisis was held in Paris on Monday, for the first time after a three-year break. Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Emmanuel Macron of Germany, Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine and German Chancellor Angela Merkel gathered in the Elysee Palace to discuss ways of settling the conflict in Donbass.

The first personal meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky, took place during the summit. Before that, they had only telephone conversations. Speaking at a news conference after the summit, the French president hailed this fact as one of the positive results of the summit.

The seven-hours talks yielded a final document committing to paper a number of concrete accords. Among the summit’s expected results was an agreement to exchange prisoners-of-war in Donbass under the formula of "all identified for all identified" by the yearend.

The summit’s participants also called for a complete and all-embracing ceasefire before the end of 2019 and agreed to support an accord within the framework of the Contact Group on the political settlement in eastern Ukraine on three additional sections of disengaging forces and weapons in the conflict area by the end of March 2020.

And last but not least, the leaders agreed to continue the top-level discussion in the Normandy format in a span of four months and to use this time to make further steps towards political settlement of the conflict in Donbass.