Milan, 17/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European leaders were cautiously optimistic after the meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko in which they took part on the sidelines of the 10th ASEM summit in Milan on Friday 17 October.
The Russian and Ukrainian heads of state had not seen each other since their meeting in Minsk on 25 August - in other words a week before the agreement made in Minsk on 5 September on a ceasefire to the conflict in the East of Ukraine. The idea of this meeting, which stole the limelight at the ASEM summit, was to support progress towards a lasting ceasefire on the ground, where multiple violations currently continue.
At the end of the meeting hosted by Italy's Prime Minster Matteo Renzi, which was also attended by the EU leaders - the outgoing presidents of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and European Commission, José Manuel Barroso - Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, France's President François Hollande and UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Renzi said he was “really positive”, admitting the persistence of “numerous differences of opinion” between the three parties, however.
“We agreed on the need to bring peace and stability back to Eastern Ukraine. To this effect, it is essential that we ensure implementation of the Minks agreements, in particular as regards the ceasefire, border control and the holding of elections. The keyword was 'implementation', 'implementation', 'implementation', said Van Rompuy during the final press conference closing the ASEM summit. “President Putin made it clear that Russia does not want to create another Transnistria and that Donbas remains an integral part of Ukraine”, Van Rompuy also commented, in response to questions from the media. “I believe the meeting was constructive and now the key is a serious implementation so that trust can be created and consolidated”, Barroso stated.
“Things are progressing but they are not settled”, Hollande had said earlier, at the end of the meeting. Cameron believed the meeting was “positive”, saying that Putin clearly stated that he did not want a frozen conflict or Ukraine to be divided. If this is correct, Cameron said, then Russia must take immediate action to fulfil this agreement. Otherwise, he said, the countries of the EU will have to keep their sanctions and to exert pressure so as to avoid conflicts of this type on the European continent. Merkel, who held a private meeting with Putin on Thursday evening, stated at Thursday lunchtime that she could “not see a breakthrough here at all”. “We will continue to talk. There was progress on some details but the main issue is continued violations of the territorial integrity of Ukraine”, she added.
The meeting on Friday morning tackled in particular the issue of local elections in the East of Ukraine, and the issue of the use of remote control drones to survey the borders between Russia and Ukraine, with Russia pushing to have its drones alongside those of France and Germany.
On Friday afternoon, a second meeting between Putin and Poroshenko - in which Hollande and Merkel also took part - ended on a good note as regards the Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute. “We have made some progress on this issue. We agreed on some new criteria for the contracts [for the supply of gas] and now we must agree on the sources of finance, on the money which will serve to finance this contract”, Poroshenko stated after this meeting. On the sidelines of the ASEM summit, Russian, Ukrainian and European experts gathered to prepare the next tripartite ministerial meeting in Berlin on 21 October, which is intended to finalise the provisional agreement aiming to settle the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine, and to re-establish the deliveries of Russian gas to Ukraine, Barroso said on Friday morning.
Putin was also summoned to move forward on the issue of the Malaysian Airlines plane crash, in which a plane was struck down over the East of Ukraine in July. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte urged Putin, during a bilateral meeting on Thursday evening, to ensure Russia's “maximum cooperation” in the framework of the investigation into the crash of flight MH17. The Netherlands, which lost 153 nationals in this tragedy, is leading the international investigation into the circumstances. Rutte told Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was also in Milan, that he would travel to Malaysia and then to Australia next month to highlight the urgency of the issue in the eyes of the international community. On the sidelines of the summit, Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop told her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, about the frustration Canberra feels at the scant collaboration of the Russian authorities in the investigation of this tragedy, in which 38 of the 298 victims were Australian. (EH)