Brussels, 11/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - At their Normandy format meeting in Berlin on Wednesday 11 May, the four foreign affairs ministers, Sergei Lavrov from Russia, Pavlo Klimkin from Ukraine, Jean-Marc Ayrault from France and Frank-Walter Steinmeier from Germany reached an agreement on measures to increase security in Ukraine.
Steinmeier told press that “we have made significant progress on security questions and have agreed concrete measures”. According to Lavrov, there was agreement on “a complete raft of agreements on maintaining security, observing the ceasefire, withdrawing weapons and increased means of control on how arms are stockpiled in depots, to prevent them disappearing from there”.
Steinmeier also added: “Security is not everything in the East of Ukraine but nothing is possible without it”. He appeared less satisfied with regard to the political aspects of the Ukrainian conflict and said that “the political process remains complicated” particularly with regard to the local elections. “We will attempt to reach a compromise within the trilateral contact group”, he added. In Lavrov's view, “the most important thing now is directly to coordinate all the questions related to the elections in the contact group and its political sub-group”. He explained that the date of the elections depended on the resolution of the political problems within the contact group.
Lavrov and Steinmeier confirmed that the Normandy format ministers had reached an agreement on the presence of international observers during the elections. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)