Ukraine Breakthrough Paves Way for Summit in Paris, Merkel Says

(Bloomberg) -- A top-level summit meeting in Paris aimed at ending five years of fighting in eastern Ukraine is now moving ahead, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Merkel said a recent breakthrough in talks paved the way for her to meet the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and France in an attempt to implement the 2015 Minsk accord and end fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces.

“We’ve taken a step forward, but many more steps remain ahead of us,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday after meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. A Merkel spokeswoman earlier said the four-way summit would take place in the “near future.”

Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron have embraced a window of opportunity in the stalled talks since the election of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s leader, who has vowed to end the conflict and smooth relations with Moscow. Merkel spoke a day after negotiators meeting in the Belarusian capital of Minsk thrashed out a schedule according to which elections can be held in eastern Ukrainian breakaway regions and a new law can be passed granting them special status.

That sequencing, according to a plan proposed by then-German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, now the country’s president, ends a crucial stalemate that had hobbled the process.

Ukraine and Russia, close allies in the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union, have been at loggerheads since protesters in 2014 overthrew Kremlin-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych. Russia responded by annexing Crimea and fomenting the conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region, which has killed more than 13,000 people.

The hostilities have triggered U.S. and European Union sanctions against Russia, rekindling Cold War rivalries. Asked about the prospect for lifting the EU measures, Merkel said negotiating parties still had much work ahead of them.

“What we can say now is not that we can already lift sanctions, rather that the conditions are there” and that leaders can move forward toward a summit in Paris, Merkel said.

Zelenskiy himself became embroiled in scandal after last week’s release of his July phone call with President Donald Trump, in which the Ukrainian leader joined in Trump’s criticism of Merkel’s leadership. The revelation triggered concern in Berlin that four-way talks could be stalled.

Zelenskiy this week reiterated that Ukraine wants a cease-fire, a withdrawal of Russian-backed fighters and control of its border back before ballots are cast in Donbas.

“If we want elections under Ukrainian law, we understand the border should be ours,” Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kiev. Elections can’t be held if “any troops” remain in the disputed regions, he said.

--With assistance from Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Volodymyr Verbyany and Kateryna Choursina.

To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net;Arne Delfs in Berlin at adelfs@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt

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