Ukraine peace talks set to be held in Paris

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet the leaders of Germany, France, and Ukraine in the French capital, Paris, to discuss means to resolve the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

“We are far from a resolution, but there are elements that boost our confidence that the crisis can be overcome and the most important point is that there is currently no shooting (in east Ukraine),” Putin said on Thursday a day before his planned meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The Russian president said he hoped that the Minsk agreements previously reached between the Ukrainian warring sides in the Belarusian capital – one in September 2014 and another in February this year – would be enforced and thus end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has lasted for 17 months.

“I am counting on the fact that the Minsk accords will be carried out, which unfortunately today is not the case,” Putin said.

The state of the deals

On Wednesday, Ukraine announced an initial agreement with the pro-Russia forces in the east to withdraw smaller weapons from the buffer zone between the two sides. The warring sides had earlier agreed, under the second Minsk agreement, to withdraw weapons with calibers over 100 mm.

Besides the pullout of heavy weapons, the second Minsk agreement had also introduced such measures as a ceasefire and constitutional reforms in Ukraine by the end of the year.

There are conflicting reports about the state of the Minsk agreements.

Kiev and the pro-Russians have accused each other of continuing to use heavy artillery, thus violating the ceasefire deal. Some reports, however, have previously said that heavy weapons were actually withdrawn from front lines.

The two mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk – known collectively as the Donbass – have witnessed deadly clashes since April last year, when Kiev decided to silence pro-Russia protests there.

Latest UN figures indicate that some 8,000 people have so far been killed in the conflict.

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