Posted on 01/26/2022 8:31:43 PM PST by TigerClaws
Moscow and Kyiv on Wednesday agreed at talks in Paris that all parties should observe a ceasefire in the east of Ukraine after more than eight hours of discussions which were hailed by a French diplomat as sending a "good signal."
A Russian troop build-up close to the border with east of Ukraine has raised fears the Kremlin is planning military intervention in its pro-EU neighbor as Moscow presses demands over NATO's presence in eastern Europe.
An aide to French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the Paris talks had been about resolving the separatist fighting in eastern Ukraine since 2014, not the threat of a Russian invasion.
But "the question was whether the Russians wanted to signal a thaw," he said, adding that the "difficult" discussions had ultimately resulted in something positive.
"In the current circumstances, we received a good signal," he said.
For the first time since 2019, Ukraine and Russia agreed to sign a joint statement along with France and Germany about the ongoing conflict between Ukrainian forces and separatists in the east of the country.
The four nations have been working towards reaching a peace deal for eastern Ukraine since 2014 and are known collectively as the Normandy Group.
"However difficult the discussions have been since December 2019, the Normandy Group has been able to agree on several key points," the French aide said.
The joint statement committed both sides to "an unconditional respect for the ceasefire" and also said that they would meet again in two weeks' time in Berlin.
A 2014 ceasefire deal — bolstered in 2020 — helped end the worst fighting over two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine that has claimed some 13,000 lives.
Western countries have been concerned that Russia could use a flare up in fighting along the front between Ukrainian soldiers and separatists as a pretext to launch an invasion of its neighbor. 'Not easy'
The Kremlin's envoy Dmitry Kozak said the main outcome of the four-way talks also involving France and Germany was the agreement on keeping the ceasefire.
He said that "despite all the differences in interpretations, we agreed that the ceasefire (in eastern Ukraine) must be maintained by all the parties in line with the accords."
Announcing that the new round of talks would be held in Berlin in two weeks, he added: "We need a supplementary pause. We hope that this process will have results in two weeks."
He said that the Berlin talks would take place at the same level as the Paris session involving diplomatic envoys, adding that for the moment a summit involving heads of state was "not on the agenda."
"We hope our colleagues have understood our arguments and that in two weeks we will achieve results," said Kozak, who is also the deputy head of President Vladimir Putin's administration.
He insisted that the situation in the east of Ukraine — where pro-Russia separatists have declared breakaway regions — and the tensions along the border were "two separate issues."
Ukraine's envoy Andriy Yermak, speaking to reporters separately, said that the talks were "not easy."
"The support for the sustainable ceasefire is extremely important," he said, adding that there were differences over the interpretation of the Minsk Agreement which ended the worst of the fighting in 2014.
"The very important thing is that today’s communique is the first meaningful document we managed to agree on since December 2019" when Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy met in Paris.
Fake news in support of previous fake news? Nobody planned the war from the start?
I’m sure Biden is heartbroken.
As long as they can keep Biden & our MSM away Ukraine will be ok. Biden is ok with Ukraine folks spilling their blood in a losing battle. USA Today has article saying Putin wouldn’t stop at Ukraine. What a warmongering paper, propaganda trying to gin up lib base for was, the irony right?
Someone somewhere is waving around a paper around saying peace in their time.
Ya think when Putin said all along it’s time to negotiate deals on security he meant it.....his troop movement certainly got the idiots to the table to do more than chat.
Putin wants Ukraine back in the fold so badly, he can taste it. Keep an eye out for a false flag event before the Berlin talks.
Ukraine wasn’t the issue......Putin wants NATO expansion along his borders to cease and security deals negotiated to replace all the years of broken ones. This time around he wasn’t just moving his military near Ukraine.....he ran it up his entire border.....I think he meant business or else.
No he doesn’t....he wants NATO to stop expanding on his borders.....If it was just about Ukraine alone he would have snatched it long ago. Nobody wants Ukraine.
Biden and the Democrat Neocons need this war, they need a distraction for the inflation, poor jobs reports, and falling poll numbers. A few thousand dead marines from a nuclear blast in Ukraine would have saved Joe
Don’t you need a shooting session before you can have a cease-fire?
Putin is not going to invade the Ukraine. 🙄
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