MOSCOW (Sputnik) – French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has left the Normandy Four talks on Ukrainian reconciliation in Berlin, but his Russian, German and Ukrainian counterparts continue the discussion, an anonymous source told RIA Novosti.
"The foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine and Germany continue to discuss the wording of the final document. The discussion is rather tough," the source said.
The agenda of the Monday talks between Sergei Lavrov, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Laurent Fabius, and Pavlo Klimkin focused on the implementation of the Minsk peace accords, including setting up working sub-groups within the so-called Contact Group on Ukraine.
The results of the talks are expected to become a key issue of discussion during a G7 summit, which starts in Germany on Tuesday.
Normandy Four format talks on Ukrainian reconciliation have been held multiple times, with the leaders of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine having worked out a breakthrough ceasefire deal in February, during a meeting in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. The ceasefire was later signed by Kiev and pro-independence fighters of southeastern Ukraine.
This was the second ceasefire enforced in southeastern Ukraine. The first one was agreed upon in September, 2014, during a meeting of the trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, which comprises representatives from Kiev, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR), Moscow and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which has been monitoring the situation in Ukraine.
The September truce failed to hold and there was an upsurge in violence in Ukraine's southeastern regions in January, following which the marathon Normandy talks were organized.
