All news

All claims Russia refuses to hold Normandy Quartet meetings groundless — Foreign Ministry

Maria Zakharova stressed that the Normandy Quartet partners continued to refrain from making high-principled assessments of Kiev’s behavior and preferred to put the blame for the lack of progress in negotiations on Russia

MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. Berlin and Paris groundlessly claim that Russia has dodged a Normandy Quartet meeting following the publication of correspondence between foreign ministers, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Thursday.

"The foreign ministries of France and Germany reacted in a synchronized way to our publication of correspondence regarding preparations for a ministerial level meeting. Berlin and Paris stated groundlessly again that Russia had allegedly refused to take part in such a meeting," Zakharova said. "Where is it written down in the documents that we published that Russia refuses to hold such a meeting? Is there such a line? Or possibly is it said between the lines? We have never stated such a refusal either verbally or in writing. We continued the work to coordinate an agenda and a draft of the final document. These documents state this very clearly," Zakharova said.

That both Berlin and Paris have distorted the facts concerning preparations for a Normandy Quartet meeting merely shows Russia made the correct move by publishing the correspondence between the foreign ministers of Russia, Germany and France.

"The distortion of our position by both Berlin and Paris apparently shows the correctness of our decision to make these documents public," Zakharova said.

She stressed that the Normandy Quartet partners continued to refrain from making high-principled assessments of Kiev’s behavior and preferred to put the blame for the lack of progress in negotiations on Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on November 17 published diplomatic correspondence between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his French and German counterparts in order to prevent distortions of Moscow’s position regarding the idea of a meeting of Normandy Quartet foreign ministers. Zakharova explained later that this correspondence showed Moscow’s proposals regarding the Normandy Quartet in order to fill a future meeting with specific content, and also demonstrated that the Western partners’ claims about Russia’s allegedly unconstructive stance were groundless.