Brussels, 05/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 5 February, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini gave her support to the Franco-German initiative to find a solution to the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.
“The European Union supports all the initiatives aimed at bringing political solution to the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The efforts of [Germany's] Chancellor Angela Merkel and [France's] President François Hollande, and the visits to Kiev and Moscow they have just announced, are clearly going in this direction”, Mogherini says in a press release.
Hollande announced that he was visiting Kiev on Thursday 5 February, accompanied by Merkel, and the following day Moscow. They were expecting to present Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko with a peace plan, before giving it to Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
Hollande stated that there were two options - military or diplomatic. “From today, there are two options - either we embrace a logic that consists of arming the main actors as some are doing, the Russians in relation to the separatists. And then there is another option, which is not certain to succeed (…) it's the option of diplomacy, of negotiation”. Hollande warned that the diplomatic option could not “be prolonged indefinitely”.
Mogherini stated that the EU was “united in using all the means available to push for a political solution, by applying pressure as well as continuing dialogue”.
Sanctions could be extended to 19 people and 9 entities. Elsewhere, the ambassadors of the EU reached an agreement on Thursday 5 February for taking sanctions out on 19 new people and 9 new entities which threaten or undermine Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. A European source told EUROPE that the majority of people were Ukrainian but that there were also Russians, and that the entities were “not exclusively Ukrainian”. According to news agency Reuters, five Russian nationals and one Russian company were reportedly on the list. (CG)