Yermak announces a new meeting of Normandy format advisers

The head of the President's Office Andrii Yermak announced a new meeting of advisers to the heads of the Normandy format.

He said this at a briefing in Berlin.

According to him, the next meeting will take place soon. Yermak didn't name the exact date.

Speaking about the results of the meeting on February 10, he stressed that all participants expressed their full commitment to the comprehensive ceasefire in Donbas.

Yermak also said that the Ukrainian side hoped to unblock humanitarian issues at the next meeting of the trilateral contact group on the peaceful settlement of the situation in Donbas.

"We hope that the next meeting of the TCG will unblock humanitarian issues: the release of detainees, the opening of the checkpoints, which have been ready for more than a year on the Ukrainian side," said the head of the OPU.

On February 10, a meeting of advisers to the heads of the Normandy format took place in Berlin. As a result, no document could be agreed upon.

The previous meeting of advisers to the heads of the Normandy format took place in Paris on January 26, and the parties agreed on a communiqué for the first time since December 2019. Advisers to the 4 leaders supported the ceasefire in Donbas, which should operate without any conditions.

According to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, discussions are currently underway in the TCG, but the process is not moving forward.

In February 2021, the then Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, Oleksii Reznikov, said that the Minsk negotiation process to resolve the situation in Donbas had been virtually blocked since July 2020.

Russia accuses Ukraine of violating the Minsk agreements and under this pretext is obstructing the work of the Normandy format. According to the representative of the Russian Federation at the talks of advisers to the leaders of the Normandy 4 Dmitry Kozak, there are "unresolved differences between the parties on the interpretation of the Minsk agreements."