French President Francois Hollande said that his and German Chancelor Angela Merkel's initiative to reach peace in Ukraine is one of the last chances to avoid a war scenario.
"If we don't find not just a compromise but a lasting peace agreement, we know perfectly well what the scenario will be. It has a name, it's called war," Hollande said, speaking to reporters in Tulle, France on Saturday.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that "we want to build security in Europe together with Russia and not against it,” adding that she believes that the Ukrainian "crisis cannot be resolved using military means."
“No one is interested in a new split in Europe, moreover, no one’s interested in a confrontation that is escalating more and more,” the German Chancellor added.
President Hollande and Chancellor Merkel were in Moscow Friday to hold a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the crisis in Ukraine. The leaders were in Kiev the day before to discuss the issue with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
According to various reports, the Merkel-Hollande plan is based on 12 points of the Minsk Protocol with several revisions, including the delineation of conflicting sides along the current separation line between Kiev-led forces and armed militia in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics.
Despite the ceasefire agreement reached by the independence supporters and Kiev in 2014, the military clashes intensified in southeastern Ukraine in the first weeks of this year. The latest rounds of Contact Group talks on regulating the crisis in Ukraine failed to yield results.
