BERLIN, January 5. /TASS/. A foreign ministerial meeting in the “Normandy format” on settlement of the situation in southeast Ukraine may be held January 9 in Berlin, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexei Makeyev, who attended today’s “Normandy format” meeting at the level of political directors in Berlin, wrote on Twitter.
“The four ministers will talk January 9,” Makeyev wrote on the microblog.
Today’s meeting in the “Normandy format” on settlement of the Ukrainian crisis involved Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.
The name “Normandy format” appeared after a meeting held June 6 in Normandy that involved the leaders of the above-mentioned countries.
Over 4,000 people have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands have fled Ukraine’s southeast as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, conducted since mid-April, to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics, according to United Nations data.
A ceasefire was agreed upon at talks between the parties to the Ukrainian conflict mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed his plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine.
Numerous violations of the ceasefire, which took effect the same day, have been reported since.
A "day of silence" in eastern Ukraine began at 09:00 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) on December 9. It was seen as another attempt by both parties to the intra-Ukrainian conflict to put an end to hostilities.