On Tuesday 20 June, the director general for policy and communication at Ukraine's foreign affairs ministry, Oleksii Makeiev, the special envoy for Ukraine from the German foreign affairs ministry, Andreas Prothmann, and the deputy director for Russia and Eastern Europe at the French foreign affairs ministry, Raphaël Martin de Lagarde, recognised that progress on implementing the Minsk agreements was slow.
"We would have like to report on much quicker progress, but we will not give up", Prothmann stated. Makeiev meanwhile said that there was no "good news" to give. "Russia does not show any intention of respecting the Minsk agreements. The Russian president has not asked his troops to respect the ceasefire and has not withdrawn his troops", he added, stating that since 1 January, "the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been bombed over 20,000 times". He also stated that heavy weapons have not been withdrawn and that Russia and the pro-Russian rebels are opposed to an OSCE mission control 409km from the border between Russia and Ukraine. "We cannot see any political resolve [from Russia] to make progress in the Minsk format [trilateral group] or Normandy format", he said.
In Prothmann's view, the most urgent issue is improving safety on the ground. "This is the initial logic of the Minsk agreements. Safety is a pre-condition for all other action, especially political action", he said, calling for a trustworthy ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons and disengagement on the ground. Martin de Lagarde and Makeiev stated that in the current safety conditions it was impossible to organise elections in Donbas. The French diplomat also said that the humanitarian situation was difficult, with 3.8 million people needing humanitarian assistance but it being difficult for this to arrive in the territories held by pro-Russian rebels.
Prothmann and Martin de Lagarde moreover stated that there was no Plan B to the Minsk agreements, despite the limited progress. "I don't believe there is a Plan B (...) because the Russian and Ukrainian parties are attached to both the Normandy format and the Minsk agreements, just as all the European partners and Americans are", Martin de Lagarde stated, adding that the real Plan B would be to do nothing because "in the current conditions, we cannot re-write Minsk or change the format". "That would be dangerous and there would be a risk of escalation", he said.
With fewer than two days to go until the European summit, which is expected to focus on the extension of economic sanctions on Russia, Makeiev indeed called for this extension to be agreed and even asked the MEPs to put pressure on their leaders for the sanctions to be extended by 12 months and not by six, as has been the case until now. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)