KIEV, October 11. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said on Monday he thinks that the Normandy format (Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine) is the only format on the settlement of the conflict in Donbass.
"I completely support this format and think that we have no other tool other than the Normandy format to get over this situation, to really stop the war in eastern Ukraine," he said during talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. A fragment of the telephone talks was posted on the Telegram channel of Ukraine’s Dom television channel.
The Ukrainian president also said he wanted a meeting of the Normandy Four leader to be organized in the near future.
The office of the Ukrainian president said earlier that the sides had discussed further steps toward peaceful settlement of the situation in Donbass and preparations of the Normandy Four summit.
Apart from that, Merkel and Macron had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday evening. According to the Kremlin press service, the leaders stressed the importance of the implementation of the Minsk agreements as the only settlement basis.
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 then. The latest summit in the Normandy format was held in Paris in December 2019. In the recent months, talks have been held at levels of political adviser and foreign ministers.