MOSCOW, February 11. /TASS/. Deputy chief of the Russian presidential staff Dmitry Kozak has said that Russia’s partners in the Normandy Quartet (Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France) tend to procrastinate on negotiations on a settlement of the intra-Ukrainian conflict - in strict accordance with the instructions they have received from the United States.

"For some reason, our counterparts think that time plays into their hands and that they should drag their feet in the negotiations," Kozak told the media on Friday following Thursday’s meeting of the Normandy Quartet’s political advisers, which ended inconclusively.

"Moreover, from our friends in a NATO country, we have received a document - an instruction from the US Department of State to all NATO countries regarding the way they should conduct negotiations with Russia concerning the settlement of the conflict and the implementation of the Minsk Accords. It is an instruction on how to stall all negotiations."

Kozak stressed that precisely that was happening to the process of Donbass settlement talks.

"This instruction is fresh, issued just one month ago. But in fact, it is a replica of the style of negotiations that has been observed in the Normandy Quartet for the past seven years," he said.

On Thursday, the Normandy Quartet’s political advisers held nine hours of talks in Berlin which failed to produce a joint document. Kozak described the situation as a stalemate. Kiev refused to agree to conduct a direct dialogue with the Donbass republics regarding the region’s future status in post-conflict Ukraine. And while discussing a draft joint communique Ukraine strongly refused even to cite the Minsk agreements, he said.