Putin will never agree to disarmament of Donbass before elections - Pogrebinsky

The current meeting in the Normandy format is a gesture of goodwill towards the German Chancellor on the part of the President of the Russian Federation, said Mikhail Pogrebinsky, director of the Kyiv Center for Political Research and Conflictology, in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets.

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The publication’s interlocutor noted that back on October 17, everyone believed that there would be no meeting in the Normandy format.

“Probably overnight, Paris and Berlin were able to persuade Ukraine and Russia to a compromise, according to which the DPR and LPR would withdraw their armed forces to a safe distance, and Ukraine would coordinate the election law, the expert suggests. “This is the minimum that could justify tomorrow’s meeting.”

“But there is another option,” the political scientist does not rule out. – Poroshenko goes to Berlin because he was ordered to. For him, on the one hand, it is important to do nothing, and on the other hand, not to be blamed for the disruption of Minsk. But Russian President Vladimir Putin is going because, firstly, he cannot afford to ignore the meeting, even if it does not lead to any serious progress, and on the other hand, he does not want to put Merkel in the position of a loser, since It was she who organized the meeting in the “Normandy format”. This gesture of goodwill towards the German Chancellor may be necessary for the Russian President to win her over to his side in the process of resolving the Syrian crisis.”

“Be that as it may, Putin will never agree to first the DPR and LPR disarming, and then holding elections on their territory,” Pogrebinsky sums up. – This can only happen gradually. All statements by Poroshenko to the contrary, that he allegedly agreed on something with someone, are a direct and outright lie. France and Germany have long been in favor of parallelism in the implementation of the Minsk agreements; there is no reason why the European Union could change its mind.”