BRUSSELS, November 17 (Sputnik) — EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said Monday that she has not yet decided on whether to go to Moscow for talks on the peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.
"Before deciding if it's useful to go to Russia for me, first of all I would need to physically and psychologically prepare, definitely. Apart from that we need to check if the conditions are there for the meeting to be fruitful," Mogherini said, adding that such a decision has not been taken yet.
Mogherini said that the idea of her going to Russia was raised by "quite many" EU foreign affairs ministers and that she has taken this proposal into consideration.
Mogherini added that the next meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council is likely to be devoted to discussing strategic relations between the EU and Russia.
Earlier on Monday, a source who requested anonymity told journalists that the European Union's new foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini had expressed willingness to travel at some point to Kiev and Moscow to take part in talks on the peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis.
During the Monday meeting the EU foreign ministers reiterated their support for the Minsk Protocol and Memorandum and stressed the need to ramp up the talks in the framework of the trilateral Contact Group.
Following a February coup in Kiev, residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine established people's republics that later declared independence in a move that led to an armed conflict in mid-April, when Kiev launched a military operation to suppress the independence movement in the region.
A ceasefire between the warring sides was agreed upon at a meeting of the so-called Contact Group on Ukraine, comprising representatives of Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) held in Minsk on September 5. Another meeting of the Contact Group on September 19 resulted in a memorandum, specifying the implementation of the ceasefire. Since the establishment of the truce, the sides have repeatedly accused each other of numerous violations.
