Poroshenko: Normandy Format session possible in June
A Normandy Format meeting may take place in June on the date commemorating the anti-Hitler coalition’s landing in Normandy, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the TV channel 112 Ukraine.
“French President Emmanuel Macron… and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will contact Putin in May already, coordinate with the US and directly with US President Donald Trump, and, I consider it possible… that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be invited to the commemoration of the opening of the Second Front, the date the allied troops landed in Normandy (6 June). The four of us will meet, we have a clear program of what we will do so that, finally, the land of Ukraine that has suffered so much will have peace,” Interfax-Ukraine cites Poroshenko as saying.
The president said that in May or at the start of June, Normandy Format documents will be signed which provide for the withdrawal of Russian troops, heavy equipment and artillery from Ukrainian territory and the disarmament of the illegal armed groups. A decision should also be made concerning the UN “Blue Berets” (peacekeepers), Poroshenko noted.
On 12 April after meeting with Merkel and Macron in Paris, Poroshenko announced that France and Germany had agreed to a Normandy Format meeting after Ukraine’s presidential elections.