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Germany, France must push Kiev to implement Paris summit decisions, says Russian diplomat

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman stressed that Kiev continued to indulge in grand stand play instead of taking real action, which was well seen the farcical campaign over the opening of checkpoints Shchastye and Zolotoye, in the Lugansk Region at the beginning of November

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. Russia hopes that France and Germany will help persuade Ukraine to implement the Normandy Quartet’s decisions made at the Paris summit a year ago and the Minsk Accords, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a commentary in connection with the summit’s anniversary on Wednesday.

She stressed that France and Germany turned a blind eye to the Ukrainian leadership’s destructive moves that impeded the implementation of the Minsk Accords. The fact that together with Kiev they ignored the informal meeting of the UN Security Council on a settlement in southeastern Ukraine merely increases doubts if Berlin and Paris wish to promote the conflict’s settlement in earnest, she stressed.

"It has to be stated that we seem to be witnesses to a replica of the situation that was observed after the Normandy Quartet’s summit in Berlin in 2016. It took Kiev more than three years to implement only part of its decisions. Besides, this became possible only after presidential and parliamentary elections," Zakharova said. "We do hope that this time France and Germany will help persuade our Ukrainian partners they should implement the simple sequence of practical moves, which are unequivocally described in the package of measures and resolutions by the Normandy Quartet’s Paris summit and conduct a direct dialogue with the representatives of certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions."

The situation with translating into life the political aspects of the settlement in the region is the worst. The Ukrainian parliament’s July resolution on holding local elections in all regions of Ukraine except for Donbass was a major obstruction to enforcing the agreements.

"The conditions that the Ukrainian legislators set for Donetsk and Lugansk to meet are a crude violation of the Package of Measures. In an attempt to find a way out, Donbass invited Kiev to agree a plan for action to be taken by the legislators in accordance with the Minsk Accords, and even proposed a draft of such a plan," Zakharova said. "In response, Kiev presented its own list of joint steps which constitutes a still greater violation of the Package of Measures and ignores Donbass proposals. In the Contact Group Ukrainian representatives came out with an absurd call for declaring the Donbass project void, although it was officially proposed and received by Ukraine."

Lack of results

Zakharova recalled that since the Paris summit of one year ago only two of the seven agreed steps have been taken, and not to the full extent.

"In July, after Ukraine’s strong resistance, extra measures came into force to enhance ceasefire. By September, though, Kiev had already distorted them or disavowed them unilaterally. For the time being, the ceasefire is observed more or less mostly because Donbass does not retaliate Ukrainian bombardments and other violations of the extra measures," Zakharova said. "In December 2019 and in April 2020 there were two exchanges of held persons. But Kiev has failed to carry out legal clearance of some of these persons, who are at risk of being arrested again."

Zakharova stressed that Kiev continued to indulge in grand stand play instead of taking real action, which was well seen the farcical campaign over the opening of checkpoints Shchastye and Zolotoye, in the Lugansk Region at the beginning of November.

"For a whole year Kiev had hindered that process, refused to provide security guarantees and concealed information about work in progress in its territory from the OSCE and Lugansk," Zakharova said. "In the end it opened the checkpoints only for pedestrians while being well aware that Lugansk had been creating automobile checkpoints, extremely important for the delivery of humanitarian supplies.".