MOSCOW, August 23. /TASS/. There has been no progress in efforts to resolve the domestic crisis in Ukraine, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.
"As for a Normandy Four summit, everyone wants to make sure that it proves an important step on the path to resolving the domestic crisis in Ukraine. However, there is a need for a substantive agenda for such a summit, and there is none at the moment," he pointed out.
When asked if the Normandy Four leaders did not plan to meet because they had nothing to talk about, Peskov said: "The only thing that can be said for now is that there has been no progress and the situation is deteriorating in some ways."
When commenting on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s remark that Russia allegedly was a party to the Donbass conflict, the Kremlin spokesman said: "This is where we disagree." "It’s worth recalling that the Minsk Agreements are the cornerstone of efforts to resolve the crisis in Ukraine and the Minsk Agreements don’t mention Russia at all. It is the accords that determine the parties to the conflict and Russia has nothing to do with them," Peskov stressed.
Merkel said during a visit to Kiev on Sunday that the Normandy Four group needed to continue its work because progress in implementing the Minsk Agreements had not been achieved yet. She also called for working to hold another summit.
The Normandy Four group was established on June 6, 2014, when the leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine for the first time, discussed ways to resolve the Donbass conflict during the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day allied landings in the French region of Normandy. Five summits have been held since then, with the last one taking place in Paris on December 9, 2019. Over the past months, negotiations have mostly involved political advisors and the foreign ministers of the group’s member states.