Frau Merkel wearing an apron, came prepared with a Bavarian sausages with beer and invited me to dinner in Berlin on October 19, Francois Hollande, Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin. Invited to save the “Norman format”, which long ago threw in the trash one of her invited.
Merkel knows this, but with the spontaneity of a German cook pretends that the format can still pull from the bucket. That format is more dead than alive to her in colorful detail said the Minister of foreign Affairs Steinmeier, recently returned from Kiev. Together with his colleague from France, Herault, he was convinced that Poroshenko any elections in the Donbas and no special status will not go. He rests and repeats memorized under us dictation phrase that you first need to take the border with Russia under control and to remove all Russian troops from the Donbass, and then to hold elections, and to provide the Donbass special status.
In Kiev, the idea of the dinner were skeptical. And immediately made it clear that Poroshenko will travel to Berlin only if the sausages with beer on the table will be laid out a “road map” that will provide the conditions of security that Kiev unsuccessfully pushes in Minsk. There the representatives of Ukraine and do not want to hear about the implementation of the Minsk agreements in the order in which they were agreed by the leaders of “Normandy four”. In Kiev, everything has to be exactly the opposite: first, the return of control over the border of Donbass with Russia, the withdrawal of all Russian military equipment and troops, which they unsuccessfully with the Americans in the Donbas.
Merkel understands who torpedoes the entire Minsk process and the “Norman format” was knocked unconscious. Knows about the failed attempt of Kiev to organize sabotage in the Crimea. Knows that its initiative was merged into the toilet Americans. And continues to play innocent, saying, hold hands friends and the clink of glasses with Moselle wine can remain friends. At whose expense, and by whom this feast? There is no doubt – at the expense of Russia, which will claim the German media for intransigence and obstinacy for dinner. Better yet, if Vladimir Putin will splash a glass of Moselle right in the face Poroshenko. Then all the broken dishes can easily be blamed on the Russians.
I do not see any prospects for dinner, and French. Recently Hollande broke the trip of Vladimir Putin to Paris. After a diplomatic affront, when the leading French media expressed surprise clumsy actions of their leader, meet in Berlin for dinner with the President not with his hands. And the French sources from the diplomatic community are given to understand that negotiations in the “Normandy format” on 19 October in Berlin is possible, if by this time the sides made “real progress” on contentious issues. But in Kiev have just been the French Minister of foreign Affairs, who left there discouraged by the intransigence Poroshenko.
About any “progress” can not be considered. So whether in such a situation Vladimir Putin to go to dinner, and when Merkel and Hollande know who is sabotaging the Minsk agreement? Why waste time on empty talk in the presence of chief saboteur of Peter Poroshenko?
This is probably why the press Secretary of Russian President Peskov has considered premature to speak about the meeting in the “Normandy format” on 19 October in Berlin.
