BERLIN, July 4. /TASS/. The German capital hosted a high-level meeting, where a marathon dialogue among the political advisors to the leadership of the Normandy Quartet countries (Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France) took place. However, hardly any sort of a breakthrough was achieved, Dmitry Kozak, deputy chief of the Russian presidential staff, told the media on Friday.
"I wouldn’t dare say there was a breakthrough," Kozak concluded. "We had no easy or fundamental discussion on all aspects of settling the conflict in accordance with the Minsk Accords," the official stressed. "Much time had to be spent on clearing up Ukraine’s attitude to the package of measures and other Minsk agreements," he said, adding that "very different interpretations were heard from Kiev," including those on the meaning and interpretation of the agreements.
"Alongside this, we managed to come closer at last. I would not say a final version was agreed on, but it came closer to the adoption of a package of extra measures for a ceasefire," Kozak said, adding that the previous three months of discussions in the contact group had failed to produce any result.
"The way we see it today, we have come close to a situation where at the upcoming meeting of the Contact Group we will manage to adopt a concrete package of extra measures," Kozak vowed. "As for the final document, some of its details remain unsettled. We agreed to negotiate them by telephone."
The negotiations involving the political advisers in Berlin ran for about ten hours. Those participating in the talks were Russia’s Deputy Chief of the Presidential Staff Dmitry Kozak, Foreign Policy Advisor to the German Chancellor Jan Hecker, French Presidential Adviser Emmanuel Bonne, and Andrei Yermak, the Ukrainian presidential chief of staff.