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What the Paris summit left unresolved by 11 December 2019
Summary
Two days after the Normandy Format leaders met in Paris, a retrospective look at what had been agreed and what the meeting meant.
What had the Paris talks actually produced by 11 December 2019? Two days earlier, on 9 December 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel met in the French capital for Ukraine peace talks. It was the first time Putin and Zelensky had met, and the first four-way leaders' meeting of this kind since 2016.
A narrow, concrete outcome
The most tangible result was a commitment. Following what was described as a breakthrough in the talks, Russia and Ukraine agreed to implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019. That set a deadline of only a few weeks, which made the pledge easy to measure.
The format behind the meeting
The Normandy Format brought together Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France. The group first met informally in 2014, during the 70th anniversary of D-Day celebrations in Normandy, and had a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements between 2014 and 2015. The Paris meeting therefore revived a channel that had already shaped earlier attempts at a settlement, after a gap of three years in leader-level talks.
Reading the moment
Two features stand out. The first is the personal element: a first meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents. The second is the short ceasefire timetable, which gave the outcome a clear test. Later, the format's meetings continued until 2022, and the group's further meetings that year failed to de-escalate rising tensions before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. None of that was known on 11 December 2019, when the Paris commitments were still fresh and untested.
