Ukraine expects an upcoming Normandy Quartet (Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine) ministerial meeting to take place in Paris next week to bring about practical results, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said.
“What is going to take place in Paris [a meeting between the Normandy Quartet foreign ministers] should not be yet another chat show. Either we achieve concrete results, or we show that Russia doesn’t want the implementation of the Minsk agreements,” Klimkin told journalists in Kyiv.
The Ukrainian foreign minister said he had talked with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius on June 18 to tell him openly that he was “prepared to go there [to Paris] only because my friends, the French and German foreign ministers, are asking me to go there and work on a clear-cut list of problems with their assistance.”
These problems include a genuine ceasefire and a genuine exchange of captives, “rather than the farce that is happening now involving our political prisoners,” he said.
Ukraine is also concerned about the real and appropriate monitoring of the situation by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, “because a lot of inspectors have been barred from entering Luhansk and Donetsk,” the admission of humanitarian aid to the Donbas territory not controlled by Kyiv, and a real political process there, he said.
“Only through pressure […] can we achieve de-escalation and then stabilization,” Klimkin said.
“We’ve been clearly assured that no sanctions will be lifted from Russia until the Minsk agreements are implemented,” he said.
It was reported earlier that the Normandy Quartet foreign ministers will meet in Paris on June 23.
Klimkin said also that international pressure will be put on Russia until it frees all Ukrainian citizens it is holding illegally.
“All those holding them will certainly be punished by God. But we aren’t going to wait for that but will work on having them freed,” Klimkin said.
“Our heroes are being held in Russian prisons not because someone has power – they are being held there because of Russia’s impotence,” he said.
Ukraine will continue to fight for its citizens, Klimkin said. “As for the fact that even consuls have been denied access to the two of our heroes, we will never leave it this way,” he said.
Klimkin said he could not say exactly when the Ukrainian citizens will be freed but insisted that the international community would also help Ukraine free them.
