BERLIN – In their first meeting since February 2017, a sign itself of the failure of peace talks to bring Russia’s war against Ukraine to an end , the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Ukraine and belligerent Russia voiced optimism but came to no agreement on a United Nations peacekeeping force or prisoner exchange.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas emerged from the talks late on June 11 saying “the political will is there” to bring peace.
“We fully agreed and all parties committed themselves to a permanent cease-fire; this includes the withdrawal of heavy weapons, disengagement of troops, demining in the region and free and full movement of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) mission. It was a big success and we will follow up on this,” Maas said.
If the past is any guide, the declarations will be promptly ignored by Russian-backed fighters at the war front in the eastern Donbas, where more than 10,300 people have been killed since the start of the war in April 2014, following the Kremlin’s invasion and annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
And that’s what is happening on June 12: Fighting all along the 400-kilometer combat line, injuring three Ukrainian soldiers in the last 24 hours. The weapons in use are supposed to be removed from the front. Yet 122-millimeter artillery items and 120- and 82-millimeter mortars are engaged in the hotspots of Shyrokyne and Vodyane near Mariupol, and Pisky near the destroyed Donetsk Airport. According to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Maksym Prauta, Ukrainian forces were instructed to return fire amid fresh attacks by the Russian-controlled militants.
The Ukrainian side reported killing two enemy combatants and wounding three others.
The Berlin talks with Maas started at 6 p.m. Berlin time and also involved French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, representing the four nations in the Normandy format.
The setting was the Villa Borsig, built in 1912 as the guest house for the federal foreign minister. Located outside Berlin on the shores of Lake Tegel with beautiful yachts, it exudes happiness and harmony – a stark contrast to the bloody war under way.
Maas talked about his recent visit to the war zone in Ukraine. “People started asking me when that peace will arrive that has been agreed. On that question I was not able to answer.”
While the ministers talked about the prospect of deploying a UN peacekeeping mission to Ukraine, the proposals of Russia and Ukraine “are far from each other,” Maas said. Russia wants the UN peacekeepers to have a limited role, while Ukraine wants them deployed along the Russian border and to have full access to all Kremlin-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine.
The ministers arrived within 30 minutes of each other, with Klimkin greeting his German and French colleagues with hugs while only shaking Lavrov’s hand before a group photo and then talks.
At the post-talk press conference, which started an hour later than the 10 p.m. scheduled time, Maas described the negotiations as an “open and constructive dialogue” with the view to give “a new life to the Minsk process and the Minsk agreement.”
Klimkin said that “together with Germany and France, we have a clear common position on all issues.”
The four sides discussed the issue of political prisoners – the Kremlin is holding more than 64 Ukrainians—but reached no agreement.
The ministers held out the hopes of further talks, possibly involving the heads of state of the four nations.
“We have a plan to hold such a summit in the near future but it should be properly prepared,” Klimkin noted.
Lavrov, however, suggested the Kremlin was still far from admitting reality, dismissing its war as an “internal” Ukrainian conflict.
“Of course we have not been able to solve all the problems related to the implementation of the Minsk agreements to settle the internal Ukrainian crisis, but I believe that this meeting was very useful,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Lavrov as saying.
