Home › Politics › What followed the Paris Normandy Format summit?
What followed the Paris Normandy Format summit?
Summary
A look back at the days after the first Putin–Zelensky meeting and the ceasefire pledge made in Paris.
What did the Paris peace talks leave behind by 13 December 2019? Four days earlier, on 9 December 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel had met in the French capital for talks on ending the war in Donbass.
The meeting was the first between Putin and Zelensky. It was also the first four-way leaders' meeting in this format since 2016.
As reported at the time, a breakthrough in the talks led Russia and Ukraine to agree to implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019. That commitment set a deadline of just over three weeks from the date of the summit.
The format behind the talks
The Normandy Format brought together Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France. The group first met informally in 2014, during the 70th anniversary of the D-Day celebrations in Normandy, France. It later played a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements between 2014 and 2015.
The group continued to meet until 2022. Later meetings that year failed to ease rising tensions before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
By 13 December 2019, the Paris summit and its ceasefire commitment were the most recent step in that diplomatic track.
