MUNICH, February 17. /TASS/. Russia has so far seen no progress in complying with the decisions of the Normandy Four summit held in Paris, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters on Monday following the Munich Security Conference.
"So far, we have not seen any progress in any of the areas. The disengagement of forces and equipment has been hindered by Kiev," he said. "We don’t see that the Ukrainian side is willing to agree on that issue," he continued. "It’s all about pathological unwillingness of the Ukrainian side, both under [Pyotr] Poroshenko and under [Vladimir] Zelensky, to comply with the requirements of the Minsk agreements on establishing a direct dialogue with Donetsk and Lugansk," he went on to say.
According to Lavrov, Ukrainians and Europeans are trying to delegate the settlement process from the Contact Group to the Normandy format "proceeding from the logic that Russia is a party to the conflict." "This logic is flawed, it is neither formalized in the Minsk agreements nor in Resolution 2202 of the UN Security Council," the top diplomat clarified. "Work will have to be continued in the Contact Group, or our Western colleagues will have to concede defeat in their role as guarantors to the process of implementation of the Minsk [agreements]," he said.
Another Normandy Four summit
As for holding another summit, a new agenda must be formulated on the results of the implementation of the Normandy Four decisions, Sergey Lavrov revealed.
"Before convening a summit, it is necessary not only to implement all that we previously agreed on, but also to understand what set of decisions we are going to discuss at a new summit. But this must be done only after all the previous achievements see their realization," he stated.
"When we hear statements from our Normandy Four colleagues about April as the timeframe for convening the summit, this is a wish they voice, nothing more," he went on.