[ad_1]
On December 9, 2019, Paris hosted a summit of the leaders of the Normandy Four: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, to end the war in Donbass. A year later, the situation “has changed significantly”, it is already incorrect to speak of plan B, said Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the President’s Office.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, upon the expiration of the one-year period allotted to resolve the situation in Donbass, decided to abandon Plan B: he will continue negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to the head of the President’s Office Andriy Yermak, said this in a comment to Ukrainian News.
“During this year, Volodymyr Zelenskyy managed to do several fundamentally important things in which the previous president was not successful. [Петру Порошенко] throughout the entire period of your job. The situation has changed significantly compared to what it was the previous fall before the first Normandy Four summit for President Zelensky, Podolyak says.
He noted that the number of attacks by militants against Ukrainian positions in the Donbass, as well as the number of victims, had decreased, and the question of The transit of Russian gas “under extremely favorable conditions for Ukraine” has stabilized. Also, Ermak’s advisor recalled the construction of new entry-exit checkpoints and other infrastructure facilities in Donbass.
Therefore, if the situation has changed significantly, this allows the Ukrainian team to act differently from what was supposed a year ago. Now it is incorrect to talk about plans A, B, etc. We are combining elements of different strategies and we continue to negotiate in all the formats that they can bring. and they are already bringing very concrete positive results for Ukraine, “said Podolyak.
In his opinion, the change in the situation shows that much more can be achieved in negotiations with Putin’s participation than in other formats or without negotiations.
“Is it necessary to explain separately why in specific political systems a person makes key decisions and why this person should participate in the negotiations if, on our part, we want positive progress towards peace? Ukraine therefore insists on a new meeting of the leaders of the Four of Normandy, “he added. – summarized.
In 2014, immediately after the annexation of Crimea, Russia launched an armed aggression in eastern Ukraine. The fighting is between the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on the one hand, and the Russian army and the Russian-backed militants who control parts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, on the other. The Russian Federation does not officially recognize its invasion of Ukraine, despite the facts and evidence presented by Ukraine.
Zelensky is confident that the war will be completed during his tenure.
Negotiations on the resolution of the conflict in Donbass are taking place in the trilateral contact group in Minsk (Ukraine, Russia, OSCE), as well as in the Normandy format, with the participation of representatives of Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia.
On December 9, Paris hosted a summit of the leaders of the Normandy Four: Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin. Its final communiqué establishes that the parties agreed to a ceasefire, the opening of new checkpoints, the exchange of detainees according to the formula of “all for all” until December 31, 2019, the disconnection of forces and resources in three new areas in Donbass, the extension of the law for one year. “On a special procedure for local self-government in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions” and the extension of the mandate of the OSCE special monitoring mission. The agreements were partially implemented. The next summit was expected to take place in March – April 2020, but this did not happen.
As explained by the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, the Minister of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, Oleksiy Reznikov, Zelensky said that one year is given to implement the scenario described in the Minsk Accords.
If the conflict in Donbass is not resolved through negotiations in Minsk, Ukraine “will change its tactics,” the president said. In December 2019, Zelensky said his team would not wait another five years to resolve the military conflict in Donbas. Plan B to resolve the situation in Donbass is a “wall” that will mean that in CADLO’s territory there will no longer be Ukraine, but “something else,” he said.
In November 2020, Aleksey Arestovich, the spokesman for the Ukrainian delegation of the trilateral contact group on conflict resolution in Donbass, said “unofficially” that the key idea of Plan B is the introduction of peacekeepers into the temporarily occupied territories .
[ad_2]
