KIEV, December 19. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin had made it clear to Kiev that no new meeting in the Normandy format could be organized until Ukraine implements political provisions of the Minsk Agreements, a Ukrainian political analyst said commenting on Putin’s annual news conference on Thursday.
"Putin’s idea is that meetings in the Normandy format are important and should be continued but if there is no progress in the implementation of the political part of the Minsk process, no new meeting [in this format] would take place, and it is a principled and important signal to Kiev," Director of the Kiev Center for Political and Conflict Studies Mikhail Pogrebinsky told TASS.
According to the expert, Russia’s policy toward Ukraine has not changed and the Russian president only highlighted some additional points during the news conference. "First, they were in Paris where the core of differences were exposed, and now it was stressed that Moscow will continue to demand strict implementation of the Minsk Agreements while Kiev is demonstrating that it is not ready to implement them," he said.
Putin’s answers to Ukraine-related questions indicate that another meeting [in the Normandy format] is out of question until "Donbass special status is implemented into the constitution, the issues of amnesty are resolved and a special law on elections in Donbass uncontrolled territories is passed," he noted. "Four months [before another meeting in the Normandy format] is quite enough to implement these provisions given that Kiev has political will for that. If you fail to do that or do only one-third of that, then there is no point in meeting with you and if you do at least two thirds of your homework, we will talk with you. This is, to my mind, Moscow’s position on this matter and the way it should be taken in Kiev."
However, Pogrebinsky said he doubted the current Ukrainian authorities had political will to do their "homework." "The fact that [Ukrainian] President Vladimir Zelensky at the Paris summit demonstrated interest in the implementation of the Minsk Agreements and upon return home submitted to the [Verkhovna] Rada a bill on constitutional amendments envisaging decentralization without Donbass special status is the sign that the new authorities are impossible to negotiate with," he explained.
He admitted altogether that Zelensky wanted to but was afraid of following the path of peace. "He is afraid because many are against it, even in his own party. Apart from that, that part of the US elites that is interested in the neither-peace-nor-war situation and pressure on Russia through Ukraine is pushing Kiev towards dodging the implementation of the agreements or insisting on such things as control over border prior to local elections, deployment of peacekeepers, which will be rejected by Donbass. And Moscow will support this stance," the expert noted.
As a matter of fact, according to Pogrebinsky, Kiev is "only simulating" its commitment to implement the Minsk Agreements while actually moving in the opposite direction.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at his traditional year-end news conference earlier on Thursday that he was alerted to hear Zelensky’s statements about revision of the Minsk Agreements that followed the Paris Normandy Four summit in early December. "There is nothing but the Minsk Accords," Putin stressed, recalling that the law on the special status for Donbass, extended by the Ukrainian parliament just recently, must become permanent and imbued in the Ukrainian Constitution.