Putin working toward peace talks
Print Edition
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin said he was working towards peace talks with the leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine in Minsk on Wednesday but the four still need to agree on a “number of points” by then.
“We’ve agreed that we will try to organize a meeting in the same format between heads of state and government in Minsk,” Putin told Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko yesterday.
“We will be aiming for Wednesday, if by that time we manage to agree on a number of points which we’ve been intensely discussing lately,” Putin said in the Black Sea town of Sochi following a phone call with the leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine.
The Belarussian leader said he would do his best to organize Putin’s meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, France’s Francois Hollande and Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko.
Lukashenko said the summit in the Belarussian capital Minsk would take place on Wednesday evening, saying he was keen to see peace return to “our common home.”
“People in Donetsk, Donbass are not strangers and we in Belarus will do everything” to help them out.
In a separate statement, the Kremlin confirmed that a separate lower-level meeting would take place in Berlin today.
“Then a meeting of the contact group will take place” with a view to laying the groundwork for the Minsk summit, the Kremlin said.
During the latest push to keep peace hopes alive, the leaders “continued to work on a package of measures to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine,” Berlin said of yesterday phone conversation about what Hollande has called “one of the last chances” for peace.
With the United States apparently moving towards providing Ukrainian troops with hi-tech weapons despite European opposition, US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted in Munich that the US and Europe remained united.
“Let me assure everybody, there is no division, there is no split,” Kerry said.
“We all agree that this challenge will not end through military means (but) the longer it takes, the more the off-ramps are avoided, the more we will be forced to raise the costs on Russia and its proxies.”
“International borders must not, cannot be changed by force in Europe or anywhere else,” Kerry said.
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