Played structure

Elections in the Donbass should be held according to Ukrainian laws. The leaders of the Norman Four countries at the Summit in Paris came to such an agreement, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a final press conference, TASS reports .

Representatives of Donetsk and Lugansk must agree on elections with the Ukrainian side. The elections scheduled by the separatists and November 1 should be canceled, said French President Francois Hollande. After the Verkhovna Rada adopted by the relevant law, voting in the Donbass should pass no later than 80 days later.

In addition, the parties agreed that the withdrawal of weapons of a caliber of less than 100 mm will begin on October 3. The number of checkpoints on the demarcation line in the Donbass will also be increased. Leaders also agreed to hold a meeting of the heads of the Four Four in November.

Merkel noted that on both sides of the conflict there is no one hundred percent implementation of the Minsk agreements, but there is a hope for continuing their implementation. "The situation in Debaltseve was shaken by the process, there is no way to remove heavy weapons. But it was possible to outline the ways to promote the process. There is progress, the parties are coming towards each other," she said. All participants in the Minsk agreements are committed to them and want to work in the Norman format, Hollande said.

The leaders of France and Germany noted that they are satisfied with the Four Summit achieved at the Paris summit. The meeting lasted about five hours. Half an hour after the start of the conversation of the leaders, delegations joined them. After the meeting of the Russian and Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko, left the Champs Elysees, without answering questions from journalists. Merkel and Hollande entered the press conference.

Before the start of the summit, bilateral meetings of the leaders of the states were held. Putin held negotiations with Hollande. Bilateral Russian-French relations and the situation in Syria were discussed. Olland also met Poroshenko. According to his press service, among other things, the questions of the visa-free regime between Ukraine and the EU, as well as the reform of the UN Security Council, were affected. In addition, Putin met with Merkel.

On the eve of the summit, the representative of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine said that Moscow requested Kyiv for a meeting of Putin and Poroshenko. However, the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov said that there was no such meeting in the schedule.

On February 12, at the previous Summit of the "Norman Four" in Minsk, agreements were reached , which became the basis for establishing a truce in the Donbass. Negotiations in Minsk lasted nearly 16 hours - from about 20:15 on February 11 almost until noon of the next day.

In addition to the ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons, the Minsk agreements provide for measures of political settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. In Ukraine, by the end of 2015, constitutional reform should be carried out and a constant law on the special status of individual regions of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions should be adopted. In the territories controlled by separatists, the elections "on the basis of Ukrainian legislation and universally recognized OSCE criteria" should be held.

With the implementation of the Minsk agreements , the weakening of Western sanctions against Russia is linked . The parties repeatedly accused each other of disrupting the agreements. The implementation of the agreements was a constant topic of negotiations of foreign ministers of the Norman Four. The leaders of the countries have repeatedly held telephone conversations .

The name "Norman Four" was assigned to this international format after the first personal meeting of Putin and Poroshenko on June 6, 2014 in Normandy. The conversation of the Russian and Ukrainian presidents lasted about 15 minutes in the presence of Merkel and Hollande, who initiated these negotiations. On October 17, 2014, the Four summit during the Asia -Europe forum was held in Milan. The meeting planned in January in Astana was broken due to an exacerbation of the situation in the east of Ukraine.