What did the Paris Normandy summit actually deliver?
A look back at the Paris talks between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, and the ceasefire pledge that came out of them.
What did leaders achieve when they gathered in Paris? On 10 December 2019, the day after the summit, the question was how much weight to give a meeting that was notable mainly for who sat at the table.
On 9 December 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel met for peace talks on Ukraine. It was the first time Putin and Zelensky had met, and the first four-way leaders' meeting of this kind since 2016.
The ceasefire pledge
The concrete outcome was an agreement, reached after what was described as a breakthrough in talks, that Russia and Ukraine would implement a ceasefire in the Donbass by the end of 2019. The deadline was short: only weeks remained in the year.
The format behind the meeting
The meeting belonged to the Normandy Format, a grouping of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France. Its members first met informally in 2014 during the 70th anniversary of the D-Day celebrations in Normandy. The group later played a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements between 2014 and 2015.
Reading the outcome
The significance of Paris lay in two things: the personal meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents, and a dated commitment on the ceasefire. The summit put both on record. The gathering also showed the four-country format back at leaders' level after a gap of three years.
Whether the commitment would hold was a question for the weeks after 10 December 2019. Later, the format's meetings in 2022 failed to de-escalate rising tensions before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
