Putin last met with representatives from Ukraine, France and Germany in 2019. Now there should be talks at the consultant level.
(Photo: dpa)
Moscow In the Ukraine conflict there is to be a crisis meeting in Moscow this Thursday with the participation of Germany and France at the advisory level. The responsible Kremlin official Dmitri Kosak invited to the talks in the so-called Normandy format – including with Ukraine. The Interfax agency reported this on Monday, citing a source in the presidential administration.
For Germany, the foreign policy advisor to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Jens Plötner, is there. The diplomat Emmanuel Bonne, advisor to President Emmanuel Macron, comes from France. There was initially no information from the Ukrainian side.
Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit had previously announced in Berlin that Plötner would travel to Moscow this week. A report in the “Bild” newspaper on a possible meeting between Scholz and Putin in January did not want to confirm the lifting dispute. At the moment he has nothing to report on this.
As deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, Kosak also prepares the summit in Normandy format with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. The last meeting of this kind so far took place in Paris in 2019. No summit has taken place in more than two years.
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The quartet met for the first time in Normandy on July 6, 2014 after the conflict broke out – hence the name. In the group of four, France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine are trying to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has been going on for almost eight years.
Baerbock flies to the USA for talks
It was also announced on Monday that Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock would fly to Washington for talks with her US colleague on Wednesday. According to a spokesman for the Federal Foreign Office, the subject of the talks will be, among other things, the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
There is very close contact between the US and its European allies, emphasized both the government spokesman and the spokesman for the Foreign Office with a view to the telephone conversation between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of the year.
Specifically, Putin is demanding that NATO renounce Ukraine’s membership. Moscow had threatened consequences in the event that security guarantees were rejected by the Western military alliance.
Ukraine, on the other hand, is still striving for membership in NATO, unimpressed by Russia’s warnings. If, on the other hand, an agreement is reached with the USA, Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said on Friday, this could lead to a “certain normalization and – perhaps even – improvement of mutual bilateral relations”.
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