By ANTON TROIANOVSKI, AMIE FERRIS-ROTMAN
Leaders from Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine will meet in Berlin to discuss the faltering cease-fire in eastern Ukraine
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host the leaders of France, Russia and Ukraine in
Berlin on Wednesday in a bid to push forward the patchily implemented peace
plan for eastern Ukraine that the four countries negotiated
in early 2015.
The evening meeting
in Berlin will represent Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
first visit to the German capital since the Ukraine crisis erupted and the
first meeting of the four leaders in more than a year. While officials from the
four countries have speculated for weeks that the meeting might take place, Ms.
Merkel’s spokesman only officially announced the plans Tuesday amid last-minute
wrangling over whether the timing was right.
The meeting will
address the agreements for resolving the Ukraine crisis that Germany, France, Russia, and
Ukraine negotiated in Belarus in February 2015, officials
said. The implementation of a cease-fire and a political process to bring
eastern Ukraine’s breakaway regions back into the fold, as stipulated in the
Minsk agreements, was faltering, Ms. Merkel said.
“We must exhaust
every possibility to try to make progress,” she said Tuesday. “Certainly one
cannot expect any wonders to come out of tomorrow’s meeting.”
The office of Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko said the Berlin meeting would serve “to compel
Russia” to implement the security aspects of the Minsk plan.
According to the
Interfax news agency, Mr. Putin’s spokesman criticized that statement, saying
the wording illustrated “to what extent Kiev does not intend to live up to the
obligations it assumed under the Minsk agreements.”
Nevertheless, Mr.
Putin’s spokesman continued: “President Vladimir Putin remains open and ready
for talks.”
Ms. Merkel said she
and French President François
Hollande would
also use the occasion to press Mr. Putin on Syria. Russia’s
bombardment backing the siege of Aleppo by Syrian government forces, though suspended Tuesday to
allow for the preparation of aid convoys to reach the city,
has created a humanitarian crisis, Western officials say. German officials have
been weighing a push for new European Union sanctions on Russia to push Moscow
to stop the bombing, and Ms. Merkel said Tuesday that she remained open to such
a course of action.
“Given the
situation, one currently cannot take any options off the table, including
sanctions,” Ms. Merkel said. “But the priority now must be to see how we can
relieve the suffering of the people in some way.”
In eastern Ukraine,
after months of intense combat during the summer months, a “back to school” truce
began Sept. 1—but it held firmly for just a week. Ukrainian soldiers have been
regularly wounded since the truce broke, Kiev says. In the past week, three
Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s
military said Tuesday.
Rebels are now
pledging to escalate their campaign following the killing of a prominent
commander of the Russian-backed forces on Sunday, threatening the fragile
cease-fire in place.
Arsen Pavlov, who
went by the nom de guerre “Motorola,”
was killed by a powerful bomb in his apartment elevator in Donetsk. His death
has been featured prominently in Russian state media, where he is portrayed as
a hero.
Rebel authorities lay blame on Kiev, while Ukrainian officials say Russia was
behind it. On Monday, Alexander
Zakharchenko, the
head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, one of two breakaway
regions in Ukraine’s east, vowed to avenge Mr. Pavlov’s death by taking their
fight to central and western Ukraine.
—Ruth Bender in
Berlin contributed to this article.
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