Home › Opinion › What the Paris summit promised Ukraine and Russia
What the Paris summit promised Ukraine and Russia
Summary
A look back at the Normandy Format meeting held in Paris, where a ceasefire pledge was the headline outcome.
What did the Paris talks deliver for the war in Donbass? The question frames any look back at the aftermath of the summit held on 9 December 2019, reviewed here on 10 December 2019, the day after the leaders met.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel gathered in Paris for peace talks on Ukraine. It was the first time Putin and Zelensky had met, and the first four-way leaders' meeting of this kind since 2016.
A ceasefire pledge
The concrete result was a breakthrough in talks: Russia and Ukraine agreed to implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019. That gave the meeting a clear deadline of just over three weeks.
The format behind the meeting
The grouping of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France, known as the Normandy Format, first met informally in 2014 at the 70th anniversary of D-Day celebrations in Normandy. It later played a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements between 2014 and 2015.
What the day showed
On 10 December 2019, the significance lay in the combination of a leaders' meeting after a gap of three years and a stated commitment with a date attached. A first face-to-face encounter between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents, together with the French and German leaders, put the Normandy Format back at the centre of diplomacy over Donbass.
Whether the ceasefire would take hold was a matter for the weeks ahead. Later, meetings of the format in 2022 failed to deescalate rising tensions before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which shows how long the diplomatic track ran beyond this Paris moment.
