Normandy format talks in Berlin end without tangible results

ANKARA

Negotiations in the German capital Berlin between political advisers from Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany under the Normandy format ended without yielding any substantial results, Ukrainian presidential sources said early Friday.

The second meeting of 2022, in which Ukraine was represented by Andriy Yermak, the head of the Office of the President, lasted over nine hours, said the Ukrainian presidency in a statement.

Reiterating Ukraine’s commitment to a political and diplomatic settlement of the ongoing tensions, Yermak said the country would continue to take measures to intensify the work of all existing negotiation formats in order to facilitate the peace process.

All parties reaffirmed their willingness to continue negotiations in the Normandy format, the statement noted, adding the parties also agreed on the necessity to unblock the work of the Trilateral Contact Group.

The Kremlin’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Dmitry Kozak, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s chief foreign policy adviser Jens Ploetner and French President Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic adviser Emmanuel Bonne were the other participants of the meeting who represented their countries.

A previous meeting of the Normandy format group was held two weeks ago in Paris, the first such meeting of the political advisers after more than a year’s break, amid growing tensions in the region.

Russia recently amassed over 100,000 troops on its western border with Ukraine, stoking fears in the West of an invasion.

Moscow has denied that it is preparing to invade and said its troops are there for exercises.

The Kremlin also issued a list of security demands from the West, including a rolling back of troop deployments to some ex-Soviet states and guarantees that Ukraine and Georgia will not join NATO.

Ukraine has been plagued by conflict in its eastern regions since March 2014 following Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea.