François Hollande meets Vladimir Putin in Moscow
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with French President Francois Hollande as he escorts him to his plane after a meeting at the Vnukovo internatioal airport in Moscow December 6, 2014. French President Hollande met Russian President Putin to discuss the Ukraine crisis during a brief stopover at the airport on Saturday following Hollande's two day visit to Kazakhstan.
French president François Hollande and Russian president Vladimir Putin said they believed they could help resolve the Ukraine crisis, a renewed diplomatic effort in the conflict which has thrown Moscow into its worst stand-off with the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
With an unannounced stop in Moscow, where he met Mr Putin at Vnukovo Airport, Mr Hollande became the first senior western leader to visit since Russia annexed Crimea in March.
“I was just flying over Moscow when I decided to make a stop here to discuss with you the important issues concerning the Ukrainian crisis and the problem it is causing to the people of Ukraine, to the European Union and to Russia itself,” Mr Hollande said according transcript released by the Kremlin.
Mr Putin said Mr Hollande’s brief stop on his flight home from Kazakhstan had been agreed at the G20 summit in Brisbane last month. The Russian president had left that meeting early after western leaders including German chancellor Angela Merkel publicly criticised him over his support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine and pressured him to change his stance.
Mr Putin credited the French president with initiating an early round of diplomacy on the crisis at the D-Day ceremonies in Normandy in early June, which included talks between the Russian president and Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko in the presence of Mr Hollande and Ms Merkel.
“The discussion we have […] is producing some positive results, and I’m sure that your visit today, such a brief working visit, will undoubtedly help resolve many of the problems,” Mr Putin said. Echoing remarks by Mr Poroshenko this week, he said after the meeting that he had hope that a definitive ceasefire could be agreed soon.
Mr Putin said Ukraine needed to stop blockading rebel-controlled areas in the east in order to allow the restoration of the country’s territorial integrity. Under a peace plan agreed in Minsk earlier this year, Moscow agreed to a ceasefire and to helping guarantee the integrity of Ukraine’s border with Russia. But Ukraine and western countries accuse Moscow of continuing to fuel the conflict by allowing the flow of fighters and weapons across that border.
France links Russian warship delivery to Ukraine peace deal
A photo taken on May 9, 2014 in Saint-Nazaire, western France, shows the Vladivostok warship, a Mistral class LHD amphibious vessel ordered by Russia to the STX France shipyard. The Vladivostok warship is one of two navy ships ordered to France by the Russian army.
France has stressed it could resume the suspended supply of a warship to Russia within weeks if Moscow backs moves to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. The decision to halt the scheduled delivery next month of the first of two new helicopter-carrying assault ships sold to Russia in 2011 followed months in which Paris had sought to defend the €1.2bn contract in the face of strong urging from the US and other Nato allies to abandon it.
The Moscow stopover comes just a week after Mr Hollande suspended delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia “until further notice” as a result of the Ukraine crisis. .
The first of the ships had been expected to be handed over by the end of November. Moscow has said it might take legal action if France does not deliver, and asked that Paris move by the end of the year.
But Mr Putin struck a conciliatory tone after the meeting, saying Russia would not be particularly upset if France refused to hand over the ships, as long as the money already paid by Russia was returned. He said that he had not discussed the issue with Mr Hollande.
Already under pressure from western allies to scrap the €1.2bn contract, Mr Hollande has said that the situation in the east of Ukraine did not allow France to move ahead with delivery — though he has not gone so far as to cancel the contract.
Delivery of the vessel, named Vladivostok by the Russian navy, was first halted in October after months of resistance by Paris. But it was unclear whether France would formally suspend the handover of the vessel given the possibility of having to pay hefty damages to Moscow for breach of contract.
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altri dettagli riguardo l'incontro tra Hollande e Putin
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