Kremlin Says No Progress Made In Implementing Minsk Agreements Under President Zelenskyy

The so-called Normandy Four group of countries France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine have failed to make advances in implementing the Minsk accords on the Donbas crisis settlement since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office in 2019, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th March, 2021) The so-called Normandy Four group of countries France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine have failed to make advances in implementing the Minsk accords on the Donbas crisis settlement since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office in 2019, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

"The so-called Normandy format is not doing well. We can state that under president Zelenskyy, it was not possible to make any progress in implementing neither the Minsk package of measures nor the subsequent agreements that were reached in Paris," Peskov told Russia's Argumenty i Fakty newspaper.

Pointing to the current escalation of tensions on the Line of Contact, the spokesman said that it "crosses out all the modest progress" that the four countries had reached earlier.

"Tensions are growing and no one sees reason to gather at the highest level," Peskov added.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014, when Kiev launched an offensive against the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, conventionally referred to together as Donbas, after they proclaimed independence. Their decision came in response to what they considered a coup in Kiev that toppled the old government in February of that year.

In February 2015, Normandy leaders held talks in Minsk that resulted in an agreement to stop the fighting and seek a long-term political resolution to the conflict. During a Normandy summit in Paris in late 2019, all sides agreed that the Minsk agreements remained the basis of the Donbas conflict resolution.