The representatives of France and Germany in the "Normandy format" have avoided answering the question of whether Russia is a party to the conflict. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told this in an interview with the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, - the press service of the Office of the President of Ukraine reports.
According to him, the Normandy format does not resolve all issues and cited the last meeting as an example.
"At the last meeting of the advisers to leaders of the Normandy Four countries, where Russia was represented by Mr. Dmitry Kozak, he asked our European partners if Russia was a party to the conflict. The representatives of Germany and France did not directly answer that Russia is a party to the conflict. They again included this "cautious" diplomacy, with which Ukraine does not agree, since Russia is a party to the conflict, and we understand that… They could not answer this question directly. I think this is a problem. I cannot be diplomatic in these matters, because the war has been going on for seven years, people are being killed. We do not have time to constantly go round in circles", - the president said.
As previously reported, Russia does not comply with the main provisions of the protocol signed in Minsk on September 5, 2014. In particular, the Minsk Protocol provides for an immediate bilateral cessation of the use of weapons, permanent monitoring on the Ukrainian-Russian state border and verification by the OSCE with the creation of a security zone in the border regions of Ukraine and the Russian Federation, withdrawal of illegal armed formations and military equipment, as well as militants and mercenaries, from the territory of Ukraine. Instead, Russia supports occupation authorities of the Donbas with weapons, ammunition, military equipment and personnel on a permanent basis. Russia is also categorically opposed to monitoring the section of the state border uncontrolled by Ukraine, through which convoys of military equipment and armed Russian troops regularly enter the occupied Donbas. Russian officers actually lead all units of the so-called "people's militias of the republics" under cover and under fictitious names. It was the invasion of the regular Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in 2014 and 2015 that prevented the complete elimination of the "DNR/LNR" armed formations. Many politicians in Russia do not hide this fact, calling intervention against Ukraine "the north wind".
A joint statement by 46 UN countries on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the resolution on the territorial integrity of Ukraine states that Russia is a party to the conflict in the Donbas, and not a mediator.