MOSCOW, May 10. /TASS/. The Kremlin believes that efforts within the Normandy format framework are the basis for the implementation of Minsk Accords, but the situation remains deplorable for the time being, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said ahead of the forthcoming meeting of the Normandy Quartet (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine) foreign ministers.
He said "the Normandy process for now remains the main basis for efforts to search for a settlement of the crisis in Ukraine, so maintaining it is extremely important."
"The more so, since the situation is far from being promising and productive. For the time being the situation involving the implementation of the Minsk Accords, to which the Normandy Four countries are signatories, is deplorable," Peskov said.
As Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told TASS earlier, Russia had drafted a number of proposals for the May 11 meeting of the Normandy Four foreign ministers in Berlin. It hopes that the talks would speed up the implementation of the Minsk Accords by the signatories - Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk.
The previous meeting of the Normandy Quartet’s foreign ministers was held in Paris on March 3.
On February 12, 2015 participants in the Contact Group for the Donbass settlement signed in Minsk the Normandy Quartet’s earlier agreed package of measures for the implementation of the Minsk Accords. The document envisaged, above all, comprehensive ceasefire and the pullout of heavy weapons for creating a security zone no less than 50 kilometers wide. A constitutional reform and decentralization of power in Ukraine are other basic components of the Minsk Accords.