Envoys from Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia will gather in Berlin on June 11 to try to revive a stalled peace process in eastern Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has said.
"Over the past weeks, in discussions with the foreign ministers of Ukraine, France, and Russia, we've been aiming to organize a new meeting," Maas said on a visit to the government-held port city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine with Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin on June 1.
Maas said he was pleased that the foreign ministers of the four countries would get together "to discuss the future development of Ukraine and the Minsk process" in comments released by Berlin.
Maas's statement came amid stalled efforts to put an end to a four-year conflict between Ukrainian government troops and Russia-backed separatists that has claimed more than 10,300 lives since 2014.
The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany negotiated a package of measures in February 2015 in Minsk to put an end to the conflict, but since then Kyiv and the separatists have repeatedly accused each other of violating several truces.
