UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) — The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed at a meeting Saturday that complete implementation of Minsk agreements would be the best solution needed to the Ukraine crisis.
Earlier in the day, Ban attended the Victory Day Parade in Moscow which commemorated the 70th anniversary of victory over the Nazi Germany in World War II.
During the meeting, Ban and Putin "discussed in depth the way forward on Ukraine, with both agreeing that full and good faith implementation by all sides of the 'Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk agreements' presented the best opportunity to bring forth a peaceful resolution to the conflict [in Ukraine]," the UN read-out said.
Earlier this week, the UN chief called for a full implementation of the Minsk agreements at a trilateral meeting on Ukraine.
The reconciliation agreements were worked out in February by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany in the Belarusian capital Minsk.
The deal included 13 points, stipulating a ceasefire, heavy weaponry withdrawal, prisoner swaps and constitutional reforms to grant the breakaway eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk more autonomy.
Ukraine's southeast was engulfed in a conflict since April, 2014 as Kiev launched a military operation to suppress independence supporters of eastern Ukraine's Donbass. According to UN estimates, the conflict has claimed more than 6,000 lives.
