"[The diplomats] discussed the situation in Ukraine on the eve of the meeting of the Normandy Quartet foreign ministers in Paris, and practical steps for the implementation of the Minsk agreements as the only basis for settling the crisis," the ministry said.
A Normandy Quartet ministerial meeting is scheduled to take place in the French capital on March 3.
In February 2015, the four leaders of the Normandy Format group, made up of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, hammered out a peace deal in the Belarusian capital of Minsk with the aim of ending the bloodshed in southeastern Ukraine.
Key points of the Minsk deal included a durable ceasefire, weapons withdrawals from the line of contact in Ukraine's southeast, and constitutional reforms, including devolving more powers to the regions and granting a special status to the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
