Brussels, 22/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - At a new meeting on Wednesday 21 January, the foreign ministers from France - Laurent Fabius, Germany - Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Russia - Sergei Lavrov, and Ukraine - Pavlo Klimkin called for an immediate halt to the fighting in Ukraine.
Noting “with serious concern” that the fighting in the Donbass area had “severely escalated”, they stated in a joint press release that “this must stop immediately and the regime of quiet must be restored”. They called on “all actors on the ground” to “fully” respect these calls.
The ministers called on all sides involved “to cease hostilities and to withdraw heavy weapons” in accordance with the Minsk agreements. “An agreement was finally concluded providing for the demarcation line mentioned in the Minsk protocol to be the line from which the withdrawal of heavy weapons will now have to begin”, said Steinmeier after the meeting. The line is 15 kilometres from each side of the border.
The ministers called on all the signatories of the Minsk agreements - in other words the representatives from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), from Russia, from Ukraine and from the people's republics of Donetsk and Lugansk - to meet in the coming days to implement the ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons, and to create the conditions for full implementation of the provisions of the Minsk agreements. The heads of diplomacy also called on the trilateral contact group - comprising representatives from Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE - to establish working groups on “relevant” aspects of the Minsk agreements. Fabius said that the group would meet “in the coming days” in order to implement the withdrawal of heavy weapons.
Fabius, Lavrov, Klimkin and Steinmeier reiterated that tangible progress on the full implementation of the Minsk agreements had to be achieved ahead of a summit meeting in Astana, “in particular by the creation of the relevant conditions for an effective ceasefire, an agreement on modalities for the delivery of humanitarian aid and the continuation of the release of detainees”.
Although Steinmeier believed there was “clear progress” during the meeting, tension on the ground is rising. A few hours before the meeting, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko had said that “over 9,000 soldiers from the Russian Federation” were in Ukraine “with more than 500 tanks, pieces of heavy artillery and transport vehicles for troops”. Fighting continues to rage in the east of the country and 13 people were killed by shellfire on a trolleybus on 22 January. Over 5,000 people have died since the start of the conflict. (CG)