The Russian Foreign Ministry expects that this week’s meeting among President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine in the city of Minsk will result in a solution to the Ukrainian conflict, an official source said on Monday.
On Sunday, President Putin announced an agreement to hold a meeting in the Normandy format in Minsk on Wednesday, as a result of telephone calls with Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Petro Poroshenko.
Putin commented that they had agreed to hold a meeting among the four heads of State and Government in Minsk if by the time they reached consensus to settle the Ukrainian conflict.
In that regard, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow had great expectations in the high-level summit regarding important decisions.
The efforts to find a solution to the Ukrainian crisis involve the active initiative of the Russian president, Lavrov told a news conference in which he also summarized his participation in the international conference on security in Munich, Germany.
Lavrov noted that the proposals sent by Putin to his colleagues from Paris and Berlin several days ago were analyzed during the meeting held in Moscow last Friday with Merkel and Hollande.
According to the minister, the West seems to understand the need to renounce the accusations and punishments in relation to what happens in Ukraine and there are talks about the creation of a sustainable system of European security.
Lavrov noted that the Ukrainian crisis was analyzed in all debates during the conference and in bilateral contacts (more than 15) that he had with his peers from Germany, Austria, the United States, Italy and Serbia, he said as an example.
The head of Russian diplomacy added that at the meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, they underlined that there is no other alternative than a political solution to the Ukrainian conflict. (PL)