UNITED STATES (VOP TODAY NEWS) – President of Russia Vladimir Putin held telephone talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Discussing the joint work on the settlement of the internal Ukrainian crisis, the sides noted the absence of alternatives to the Minsk complex of measures as the basis for a peaceful resolution of the crisis and agreed to continue working in the Norman format, the Kremlin press service reported .
Also, Putin and Merkel noted the importance of observing the Easter truce and reaffirmed their readiness to continue to contribute to the work of the OSCE special mission to monitor the situation on the contact line.
In addition to Ukraine, the parties also discussed the situation in Syria, as well as the implementation of a major project in the gas field “Nord Stream -2.”
The so-called Norman format (Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine) exists since June 2014, when the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the landing of Allied forces in Normandy, the leaders of the four countries for the first time discussed the problems of normalizing the situation in the Donbass.
