A "Normandy-format" telephone conference will be held on Dec.22 evening, Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov said.
“Tonight Russian President Vladimir Putin will have a telephone conversation with the leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine, i.e. the telephone conference will be held in the so-called Normandy format,” Ushakov said at a briefing on Dec.22.
“The crisis in Ukraine and the prospect of a Contact Group meeting will be definitely discussed,” he said.
The Normandy format involves four-party contacts between the leaders and foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, aimed at settling the Ukrainian crisis.
The last time the four countries’ leaders spoke by telephone was on Dec. 16. The parties stressed the importance of a swift meeting of the Contact Group for the sake of implementing the Minsk accords and launching a dialogue between Kyiv and the southeast. Among priorities are the exchange of captive persons and the removal by combatants of heavy weaponry from the line of contact, the parties said.
Furthermore, the four leaders discussed the economic recovery of the affected regions and the provision of humanitarian and social aid to the local population.
The four countries’ foreign ministers, too, have held talks in the same format. A multilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine held in Berlin on Aug. 17 lasted for about five hours.
An earlier meeting in the same format was held in Berlin on July 2. At the time the four countries’ foreign ministers adopted a declaration calling on the Contact Group to convene swiftly to agree conditions for a truce in Ukraine.
