No obstacles to Normandy Four foreign ministerial meeting — Russian deputy chief of staff

GENEVA (TASS): Nothing remains in the way of a foreign ministerial meeting in the Normandy format (Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and France), Dmitry Kozak, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, told TASS on Wednesday.

“There are no problems whatsoever in organizing a ministerial meeting of this format,” Kozak, who is also chief Russian delegate to negotiations by the Normandy Quartet’s political advisors, answered a corresponding question.

He emphasized, however, that in July 2020, the foreign ministers failed to coordinate a joint statement. “A meeting of political advisors was held in the same month. We offered to incorporate the statements regarding recommendations to the Contact Group on concrete moves towards the settlement. But we failed. We gave them to the German and French sides, they asked very much. We signed with [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov, but the effort perished and nobody even recalls this,” Kozak said.

Besides, the two formats — ministerial meetings and meetings of political advisors were practically united in August 2020, and Russia’s representatives at these talks always take the unified stance.

“Two persons are always represented from each of the parties at the talks — an authorized representative of the foreign ministry and a political advisor. There must be no division here. We always have a common position with the Foreign Ministry. No one represents himself personally — they must represent the position of the country,” he stressed.

Talks in the so-called Normandy format over Ukraine began in June 2014. During special ceremonies on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the allied landings in Normandy during World War II, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany for the first time discussed ways of settling the conflict in Donbass. A number of telephone conversations, five summit meetings, as well as contacts between foreign ministers, have been held since then. The latest summit in the Normandy format was held in Paris in December 2019.