According to the German Foreign Ministry, a ministerial meeting of the Normandy Quartet members, including Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, will take place Saturday morning.
"He wanted to, but the meeting is slated for morning and he will not be able to join it, he will be in Munich in the afternoon," the source said.
In February 2015, the quartet's leaders brokered the so-called Minsk peace deal to end hostilities in southeastern Ukraine. The pact urged warring parties in Ukraine to cease fire and pull heavy weapons from the line of contact in the east. It also proposed constitutional reforms to decentralize power in Ukraine and grant a special status to two breakaway regions.
Both the Ukrainian government and militias in Donbas failed to deliver on their commitments by the end of 2015, as initially intended. The Normandy Four has agreed to extend its deadline for completion into the current year.
Ayrault, the former French Prime Minister, was appointed as top French diplomat on Thursday following the resignation of Laurent Fabius.
