Putin: Negotiators agree on truce in Ukraine from Feb 15

MOSCOW, Feb 12 (PRIME) -- The contact group in the Ukraine peace negotiations, compound of representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, the OSCE chairman, and Russian and Ukrainian officials has signed an agreement on truce from midnight, February 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters after quadrilateral negotiations on Thursday.

Putin, French President Francois Hollande, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been holding negotiations for 16 hours by noon, Moscow time, on Thursday, in Minsk, separately from the contact group.

Head of the Donetsk republic Alexander Zakharchenko said at 12.30 p.m. Moscow time on Thursday that the contact group’s negotiations continued.

Leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France made a verbal agreement on the conditions of the Minsk declaration and finished the meeting without signing the document, Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters.

The Minsk declaration includes a condition of a unique legal status of the territories in Ukraine’s east, according to the documents available to media.

Putin set some unacceptable conditions during the peace negotiations, Poroshenko told France Presse on the sidelines of the meeting earlier on Thursday. “Unfortunately, there is no good news. By now, there is no news, but there is a hope still,” he said.

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