MOSCOW, December 22 (Sputnik) — Leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France agreed on Monday to arrange fresh meetings of the so-called Contact Group on Ukraine on December 24 and 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in his Twitter blog.
Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande held phone talks earlier in the day to discuss the implementation of Minsk agreements.
"During the discussion in the 'Normandy format,' we have agreed on a meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk on Wednesday and Friday this week," Poroshenko wrote in his tweet.
The Kremlin has confirmed that during Monday's phone conference the parties had agreed the ongoing ceasefire in southeastern Ukraine was generally holding. The four leaders had also agreed to keep in touch on the Ukraine crisis, according to the Kremlin press service.
The Contact Group on Ukraine is a group of representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe that was formed as means to facilitate a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The warring parties reached a ceasefire agreement during a September 5 meeting of the Contact Group in the Belarus capital of Minsk, and signed a memorandum specifying the implementation of the ceasefire on September 19, but have subsequently accused each other of breaking the truce.
On December 9, a "silence regime" was declared in the in the conflict-torn South-East of Ukraine, in a bid to revive peace negotiations. Last Friday, Poroshenko announced that the next round of the Contact Group talks in Minsk would take place in two days' time, but it never happened.
