PARIS, June 30. /ITAR-TASS/. France supports all the initiatives aiming to establish durable ceasefire in Ukraine, an official spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.

France speaks out in favor of bringing the situation in Ukraine back to normal and it hails all the initiatives that work towards making peace there durable, the spokesman said.

He recalled that President Francois Hollande had a telephone conversation with Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, as well as Germany’s Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday. He stressed the importance of well-specified steps for normalizing the situation from the angle of view of security and prolongation of Poroshenko’s peace plan.

The French and German leaders also called on Poroshenko and Putin to streamline joint work for setting up a mechanism of control over the ceasefire and over the situation on the Ukrainian-Russian border under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In addition, they urged the parties to the conflict to continue the process of freeing the hostages, the spokesman said.