Home › Politics › What did the Paris summit on Donbas produce?
What did the Paris summit on Donbas produce?
Summary
A retrospective on the Normandy Format meeting that brought Zelensky and Putin face to face and yielded a pledge on a ceasefire.
What did the Paris talks actually deliver? On 10 December 2019, a day after the meeting, the main outcome was a pledge: Russia and Ukraine had agreed, after a breakthrough in talks, to implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019.
The meeting took place in Paris on 9 December 2019. Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel took part in the peace talks. It was the first time Putin and Zelensky had met, and the first four-way leaders' meeting of this kind since 2016.
The format behind the talks
The gathering was held in the Normandy Format, a grouping of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France. The four countries first met informally in 2014, during the 70th anniversary of the D-Day celebrations in Normandy, France. The group later had a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements between 2014 and 2015.
What was agreed
The ceasefire commitment was the concrete result reported from the Paris meeting, with the end of 2019 set as the deadline for implementation. The sides had agreed to it following what was described as a breakthrough in the talks.
The Normandy Format continued to meet until 2022. Further meetings in 2022 failed to de-escalate rising tensions before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
