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What did the Paris Normandy summit achieve?
Summary
A retrospective on the Paris meeting of four leaders, which produced a pledge to implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019.
What did the leaders gathered in Paris on 9 December 2019 actually settle? The meeting brought together Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel for peace talks on Ukraine, and it carried two distinct firsts.
It was the first time Putin and Zelensky had met. It was also the first four-way leaders' meeting in the Normandy Format since 2016.
A ceasefire pledge
The concrete result reported from the talks came after what was described as a breakthrough. Russia and Ukraine agreed to implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019, which set a deadline of roughly three weeks from the date of the summit.
The format behind the meeting
The Normandy Format brought together Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France. The four first met informally in 2014, during the 70th anniversary commemorations of D-Day in Normandy, France. The group later played a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements between 2014 and 2015.
The Paris meeting therefore revived a format that had not convened its leaders in this configuration for three years. Its agenda was the war in Donbass, and the ceasefire commitment was the clearest outcome to emerge on 9 December 2019.
The format continued to exist for years afterwards. Meetings held in 2022 later failed to ease rising tensions before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
