BERLIN, September 11. /TASS/. Topics related to the incident with Russian opposition blogger Alexei Navalny were not raised at Friday’s meeting of the political advisers to the Normandy Four leaders, deputy head of the Russian president’s administration Dmitry Kozak said after the meeting in Berlin.
"No, these matters were not discussed. We kept to the agenda," he told reporters.
Navalny case
Navalny felt sick on August 20 while flying from Tomsk to Moscow and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. The man was taken to hospital in a state of coma and was connected to a ventilator. He was airlifted to the Berlin-based Charite clinic in the morning on August 22. Its doctors said that indicators of poisoning had been found in his body.
Charite medics said on September 7 Navalny had been taken out of the medically-induced coma and was being disconnected from the ventilator.
Last week, the German government said that German military toxicologists had found that Navalny had been exposed to a nerve agent of the Novichok family. Following this, Berlin and its Western partners demanded Moscow clarify the circumstances of the incident and warned they would look at possible sanctions against Moscow.
The Russian side stresses that it is interested in a thorough investigation of the incident but has not yet received any reply from Germany to its inquiry. Apart from that, Moscow points to the fact that no toxic agent had been spotted in Navalny’s samples before he was taken to Germany whereas the latter has given no evidence to back its theory.
Next Normandy Four summit
Issues of a next Normandy Four summit were not raised at a meeting in Berlin, deputy head of the Russian president’s administration Dmitry Kozak said on Friday.
"The topic of the summit was not even discussed," he told reporters.
Talks in the so-called Normandy format over Ukraine began to be held in June 2014. During special ceremonies on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the allied landings in Normandy during World War II, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany for the first time discussed ways of settling the conflict in Donbass. A number of telephone conversations and summit meetings, as well as contacts between foreign ministers have been held since. The latest summit in the Normandy format was held in Paris in December 2019. Their next summit was supposed to be held in a span of four months on condition that the Paris summit’s resolutions were implemented.
Ukraine
Political advisers to the Normandy Four leaders exchanged views on the entire spectrum of issues of the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine but failed to reach breakthrough solutions, deputy head of the Russian president’s administration Dmitry Kozak said on Friday after the meeting in Berlin.
"No breakthroughs have been reached," he said. "We just exchanged views on the entire spectrum of issues related to the conflict settlement. Regrettably, I cannot say that we managed to reach agreement on all of them."
"We agreed to support the ceasefire, and that the additional measures that were adopted on July 22 would be observed unconditionally, that both sides would implement the mechanisms of ensuring the ceasefire," he said, adding that the political advisers discussed "principled approached" and to the implementation of the Minsk agreements and practical steps to do that.
According to Kozak, the "stumbling block" at the talks is the position of the majority on Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) demanding Kiev "step aside from the Minsk agreements."
"We agreed that the Verkhobna Rada in the near future would consider a draft resolution to adjust the one passed on July 15," he noted.
He also said that the political advisers had agreed to try to coordinate all disputable matters by the end of September. "We agreed that dialogue on these issues will be continues at the level of our aides and deputies and that we will try to reach coordinated solutions by the end of September," he said.
"The key question of principled importance is whether we are going to continue work within the Trilateral Contact Group and in the Normandy Four format on the basis of the Minsk agreements or deviating from them," he stressed.
He recalled that Ukrainian officials were calling for the revision of the Minsk agreements as "Ukraine is not satisfied with them." "We then need to hear concrete proposals about what you want," he said, stressing that the Ukrainian side’s statements were mainly declarative in character. "We want clarity to be able to keep to unified principles, common positions within all the formats talks are being held in to avoid speaking in different languages," he added.
The previous meeting of the Normandy Four political advisers was held in Berlin on July 3. Dmitry Kozak, who represented Russia at the meeting, said after it no breakthrough had been reached. Thus, in his words, the Ukrainian side did not clearly said when a document of decentralization-related amendments to the Ukrainian constitution, as envisaged by the Minsk agreements, would be elaborated.
Talks in the so-called Normandy format over Ukraine began to be held in June 2014. During special ceremonies on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the allied landings in Normandy during World War II, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany for the first time discussed ways of settling the conflict in Donbass. A number of telephone conversations and summit meetings, as well as contacts between foreign ministers have been held since. The latest summit in the Normandy format was held in Paris in December 2019. It was the first personal meeting between Russian and Ukrainian Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky.