“The eight-hour arduous talks finished in Berlin with some tangible results for a meeting of the countries' leaders in the Normandy format in Minsk,” Melnik wrote on Twitter about the discussions in the Normandy format, involving Ukrainian, German, French and Russian diplomats.
The meeting, which was held behind closed doors, included Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin and Germany’s State Secretary of the Federal Foreign Office Markus Ederer.
The Berlin talks were held in the run-up to the meeting of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin due to take place in Minsk on Wednesday. The leaders are expected to draw up an agreement to help end the violence in eastern Ukraine, which has surged since the beginning of the year.
