“Taking into account how fast time flies, there’s not much time until the end of the year and we meet periodically to discuss how to constructively influence Kiev so that it stops all of its zigzag political shifting and moves on to dialogue and to solving all of the issues that are fixed in the Minsk agreements,” Karasin said.
Though the date of the meeting between the two diplomats has been scheduled, the venue has so far not been named, Karasin added.
“The United States has levers of influence,” Karasin said, but they can be used even if the United States is not directly involved in the Normandy format of reconciliation talks and are not participating in the Contact Group.
In February, leaders of the so-called Normandy quartet of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine following talks in Minsk brokered a ceasefire agreement between Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk in the country's east.
The Minsk agreement stipulated an all-out ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the line of contact in eastern Ukraine. According to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitors, the ceasefire has been violated many times.
Constitutional amendments in Ukraine, providing more autonomy to Donetsk and Luhanks regions, were also stipulated by the Minsk agreement. Kiev authorities have failed to comply with this provision so far.
