German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock is seeking to revive the four-nation “Normandy” format to de-escalate tensions over Ukraine, as she visited Kyiv en route to Moscow to push for European-led negotiations.
The EU, while trying to prevent the possibility of a full-blown Russian invasion, was sidelined from security talks last week between Russia and the US, Nato and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Moscow wrote off the talks as a “dead end”.
Baerbock and her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Monday they were united in pushing to revive the “Normandy” peace talks format between Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine.
The format was established to support implementation of the 2015 Minsk agreements brokered by Germany and France, which aimed to end the proxy separatist war that erupted in Ukraine’s Donbas region after Moscow annexed the Crimea in 2014.
“Now is the moment to use . . . formats such as Normandy. That way we can sit together with Ukraine and Russia at one table to de-escalate this really difficult situation,” Baerbock said.