BRUSSELS, August 30 (RIA Novosti) – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko hopes that Monday talks of the trilateral contact group involving Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on ceasefire will be effective.
“On Monday, the meeting of the trilateral contact group with the participation of the OSCE ambassador [Heidi] Tagliavini, former president of Ukraine [Leonid] Kuchma and Russia’s ambassador [Mikhail] Zurabov will be held. The discussion [topics] will include not only the hostages , including those illegally held in Russia, and not only the OSCE monitoring mission, including the border monitoring mission, but also, as I hope, the ceasefire. I hope, I think, that this discussion can be very effective,” Poroshenko told journalists.
In July, the envoys from Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE met in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, with representatives of independence supporters from eastern regions of Ukraine to discuss steps toward the truce in the Ukrainian standoff.
Since mid-April Kiev has been conducting military operation in eastern Ukraine, where residents are unhappy with the February overturn of political regime. Moscow sees the operation as punitive and has repeatedly urged the Ukrainian government to put an end to it.
