German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday said “no miracles” were achieved on the Ukraine crisis, but talks with the country’s leader and his Russian and French counterparts did lead to some progress on ending a deadlock in the peace process.
After a five-hour summit billed as “difficult,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said all sides had agreed to draw up a roadmap for applying the frayed Minsk peace accords following months of impasse.
“Between now and the end of November we have to approve a roadmap. It will be a document on the implementation of all the Minsk accords,” he said at a news conference after the Berlin gathering, according to Russian news agencies.
Merkel said at a separate press conference that the talks “didn’t achieve miracles,” but that progress was made “with the creation of a so-called roadmap.”
“There’s much work left to do,” she said, flanked by French President Francois Hollande.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on his first visit to Berlin since the conflict erupted, stressed that the Minsk accords remained the best path toward a lasting resolution to war in eastern Ukraine.
The roadmap agreed to in Berlin will be now be further thrashed out and discussed by the countries’ foreign ministers, the leaders said.
“You have to respect the successive steps of the Minsk accords,” Hollande told reporters.
Putin had not visited Berlin since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, sending relations with the West plunging to their lowest point since the Cold War.
Russia backs a separatist, pro-Moscow insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has claimed nearly 10,000 lives on both sides.
It denies accusations that it has sent troops and weapons across its border with Ukraine.
The Minsk accords, signed in February last year with French and German mediation, call for a ceasefire along with a range of political, economic and social measures to end the conflict between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels.
While the accords reduced the intensity of fighting, they have failed to stop it.
On a key sticking point — the issue of holding possible local elections in rebel-run regions, Poroshenko said no polls could take place without “the unconditional withdrawal of foreign armed forces.”
Putin for his part wants partial autonomy for rebel-held parts of eastern Ukraine like Donbass and Lugansk, while Kiev wants reassurances that fair and free elections would be held there.
None of the four leaders meeting in Berlin had expected a breakthrough, but Germany and France had argued that it was important to return to the negotiating table more than a year after the Minsk agreements were signed.
Putin, speaking separately to reporters after the talks, confirmed that the four were in favor of widening the role of the European OSCE observer mission.
Poroshenko said that meant an agreement had been reached on deploying an armed OSCE mission to the east.
Putin, who wants to assure the supply of provisions to rebel regions, said the talks had focused heavily on security matters, but on humanitarian issues “we unfortunately didn’t make much progress.”
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS