The first meeting in over three years of the heads of state and government of the so-called Normandy Four is set to take place on December 9 in Paris.
This four-way negotiation format (France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine) brought about the Minsk I and II agreements of 2014 and 2015 aimed at ending the war in eastern Ukraine. While the nitty-gritty of the actual implementation of Minsk II is being handled—as yet by and large unsuccessfully—by a number of working groups that convene regularly in Minsk and include representatives of the non-government-controlled areas in Ukraine, the Normandy format frames the negotiations and provides a communication channel to the rest of the world.
