Roundup: Ukrainian officials, experts positive about results of Normandy meeting

Ukrainian officials and experts on Thursday spoke positively of the results achieved at the recent meeting in the Normandy format, during which leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France have agreed on new steps for peace solution of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Leonid Kuchma, Kiev's representative in the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine's crisis, said that the meeting has proved that the Normandy and Minsk formats designed to peacefully end the conflict are still alive.

"I believe, that the meeting has confirmed that there is no alternative to the Normandy format and to the Minsk agreements," Kuchma said.

As one of the main achievements of the meeting, he named an agreement to develop by the end of November a new roadmap on solving the crisis on the base of the Minsk pact.

"The preparation of the roadmap for Minsk deal implementation is a positive step. And it is very properly that the document will be developed by the foreign ministers (of the Normandy states), who have the right to do it, unlike the Trilateral Contact Group, which can only make suggestions and recommendations," Kuchma said.

Meanwhile, a military analyst Yury Butusov said that the key result of the Normandy talks was an agreement to send an armed police mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to the restive area.

"In fact, sending the armed monitors to the frontline is a step towards a temporal freeze of the conflict. It is another clear evidence that there will be no a major war," Butusov said.

He explained that the introduction of the police mission will enable to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire after dark, when the truce violations are particularly frequent.

"Currently, the OSCE mission comprises exclusively of civilians, meaning that they can monitor the situation only during daylight hours. Sending the armed mission, consisting of soldiers or police, will allow monitoring the ceasefire also after dark," Butusov said.

Separately, a political analyst Kyryl Sazonov pointed that the main success of the Normandy meeting was that its participants have shown the willingness to compromise on key issues.

"The talks have resulted in real steps towards the compromise, although very cautious steps, which could be subject to backtrack. Anyway, the parties have made a number of concessions," Sazonov said.

As the major breakthroughs of the negotiations, he listed the agreement on the demilitarization of the town of Debaltseve, which is controlled by pro-independence insurgents, the deal on holding elections in Donbas and the pact on sending the armed mission to Ukraine.

In the same time, Sazonov pointed that all of the reached accords are flimsy and unspecific.

"For example, Ukraine has agreed to adopt a law on elections in Donbas, but the question is -- what kind of legislation it will be. We have a free hand on this issue," Sazonov said.

The prospects for sending the police mission to eastern Ukraine are also uncertain because insurgents have already said that this move breaches the Minsk agreement, the expert added.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande met on Wednesday evening for talks over the implementation of the Minsk Agreement for eastern Ukraine in Berlin.

The Minsk peace deal aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine was reached by the leaders of the Normandy group in February 2015 in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. However, the peace treaty has not been fully implemented. Endit