Normandy Format

The Normandy Format talks (French: Format Normandie) involve the representatives of four countries, Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France, who met unformally during the D-Day celebration in Normandy, and who aim to resolve the war in Donbass.[1] It has been also known as the Normandy contact group.[2]

Meeting in the "Normandy Format" Paris, December 9, 2019

History

The group was created on June 6, 2014, when leaders from France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine met on the margins of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day allied landings in Normandy.[3] It operates mainly through telephone calls between the leaders and their respective ministers of foreign affairs. The Normandy Format has sometimes been expanded to include Belarus, Italy and the United Kingdom.[4][5]

Negotiations and talks were stalled from 2016 until autumn 2019.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his May 2019 inaugural address made peace talks with Russia his top priority. He reaffirmed that priority in July that year when he invited via YouTube his co-equal to a dialogue with the words[6]

Let's discuss who Crimea belongs to and who isn't in the Donbass region.

On 18 July, a "comprehensive" cease-fire was agreed with arbitration by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine.[7]

The revelation in late September 2019 of a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Zelenskiy in which the latter described the support of France and Germany as lukewarm damaged Zelenskiy's image in Europe.[8][9][10] On 10 October, Zelenskiy repeated his statement in a public news conference.[11] On 21 September, "continuing bickering" had been cited as causing "a political tug-of-war" over the preliminaries to negotiations, as they had been ever since the Normandy Format meeting in 2016 at Berlin,[12] but the 9 September agreement between French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin to reconvene quadripartite talks was duly remembered,[13] and the decision to hold new talks was cemented at a joint Franco-German leaders meeting on 16 October.[14]

Country leaders (as of 2020)

Meetings

There were six meetings.[15]

  1. Château de Bénouville, Normandy, France — 6 June 2014 — the first meeting in celebration of the 70th anniversary of Operation Overlord
  2. Milan, Italy — 16–17 October 2014 — as part of Asia-Europe Meeting[4]
  3. Minsk, Belarus — 11–12 February 2015 — Minsk II was signed
  4. Paris, France — 2 October 2015
  5. Berlin, Germany — 19 October 2016
  6. Paris, France — 9 December 2019

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the March 2020 summit in Berlin, Germany, has been indefinitely postponed, along with many other large, high-profile gatherings, like the G-20 summit and 2020 Summer Olympics.

gollark: I think that's the cap?
gollark: We could start a crow cult! Neat idea.
gollark: <:crowjudge:769409090010218496> exists, nice.
gollark: We could have more <:Transistor:694654534634569809> emojis.
gollark: Interesting, more emojis.

See also

References
  1. "Russia's Putin says supports future Normandy format talks on Ukraine". news.trust.org. Thomson Reuters Foundation. 5 September 2016. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
  2. Brewster, Murray (11 September 2016). "Friends and foes alike don't see Canada as unbiased on Ukraine, experts say". CBC News. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
  3. "The Impact of the Normandy Format on the Conflict in Ukraine: Four Leaders, Three Cease-fires, and Two Summits | Center for Strategic and International Studies". www.csis.org. Retrieved 2017-05-02.
  4. "Accepting joint responsibility". bundesregierung.de. German government. 17 October 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  5. "Kremlin confirms telephone conference between Putin, Merkel, Hollande and Cameron - Vestnik Kavkaza". vestnikkavkaza.net.
  6. "Ukraine's Zelenskiy proposes peace talks with Putin". dw.com. 8 July 2019.
  7. "Russia, Ukraine Agree 'Comprehensive' Cease-Fire in Donbass". The Moscow Times. 18 July 2019.
  8. "For Ukraine's leader, Trump memo on their call is a diplomatic car crash". Reuters. 25 September 2019.
  9. "What does Germany do for Ukraine?". dw.com. 2019-09-26.
  10. "Why Zelenskiy Joined Trump in Trashing Germany". Bloomberg. 27 September 2019.
  11. "Ukraine's Zelenskiy sticks to criticism of Merkel, Macron in Trump call". dw.com. 10 October 2019.
  12. "Ukraine summit in Paris delayed amid continued bickering". dw.com. 21 September 2019.
  13. "Next Normandy summit to be held in Paris "in the next few weeks" : Elysee". Xinhua. 9 September 2019.
  14. "Conférence de presse conjointe d'Angela Merkel et Emmanuel Macron à Toulouse". 11:35 onwards: euronews. 16 October 2016.CS1 maint: location (link)
  15. https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2019/12/9/7234195/
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.