BERLIN (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, French President Francois Hollande and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko arrived at German Chancellery to participate in the Normandy Four meeting of leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany. Russian President Vladimir Putin has just arrived in Berlin and is expected to join the meeting later in the day.
19 October 2016, 11:08 GMT
The Normandy Four was created in 2014 to secure a peaceful settlement to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The group has held several rounds of talks on Ukrainian reconciliation, most notably in February when the quartet's leaders brokered a ceasefire agreement in Minsk, Belarus, signed by Kiev and the Donbass militia in February 2015.
The sides failed to fulfill the agreements' conditions by the end of 2015, as initially intended, and the deadline was extended into 2016, with the sides continuing to blame each other for the failure to abide by the Minsk deal.
The last meeting of the Normandy Four took place roughly a year ago, on October 2, 2015.
