Steinmeier formula exists, author says in response to Poroshenko denial

The so-called Steinmeier formula indeed exists and was
attempt to simplify the difficult process of fulfilling the Minsk Accords, said
on Oct. 7 Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the then-German foreign minister. The
formula emerged when the Normandy Format talks in Paris stalled, he told the
BBC news agency, which pointed out that they occurred in October 2015. “The
steps that were supposed to have taken place by both sides were too great,”
Steinmeier said. “That’s why the formula doesn’t involve anything more than an
attempt to make from large steps, which the conflict’s participants didn’t want
to make, a series of smaller steps that – despite their essence and
consequences – still need to be agreed upon.”

Steinmeier disputed the claims made recently by former President Poroshenko,
including that no agreed-upon Steinmeier formula exists. Poroshenko also
alleged that Russian President Putin refused to adopt the German version of the
formula, and instead will be working with a draft prepared by Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov. “That argument is strange to me considering one of the
representatives of the then-president was present,” Steinmeier said.

In an attempt to clarify the dispute, then-Ukrainian
Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said there was never an agreed-upon Steinmeier
formula because the former German foreign minister outlined the proposal in a
document after a deadlocked meeting of foreign ministers in the Normandy Format
in Oct. 2, 2015. “It was understood to everyone that our view of Minsk and the
Putinist view were diametrically opposed,” Klimkin said, at which point
Steinmeier proposed a series of steps in the event that elections in occupied
Donbas are held and approved. “This didn’t lead to anything, after which there
was an interesting meeting of the ministers, during which we discussed these
ideas for about three hours. And that didn’t end with anything. And then the
well-known idea was born, the letter of Steinmeier and (former French Foreign
Minister Laurent) Fabius, in which they outlined at least the logic of the
proposal. And then wrote that this is an idea for further talks. So there was
never any kind of defined formula.”

The “No Capitulation” protest movement in Ukraine has
adopted a position that implies President Zelensky will be capitulating when it
was his predecessor who did, said on Oct. 8 Bohdan Yaremenko, a People’s
Servant MP and head of the parliamentary foreign relations committee. “No
Capitulation is a very dangerous statement,” he said. “It’s a statement on
misunderstanding what has happened. The capitulation, if it happened in Ukraine,
was when the foundation was set for all that has suddenly began to worry
people, the Steinmeier formula and so forth. That was September 2014 and
February 2015, when the Minsk Accords were signed, which has all that that
(former President) Kuchma agreed to in September this year.”

In referring to Kuchma, Yaremenko meant the signed
letter to OSCE envoy Martin Sajdik in the former president, serving as
Ukraine’s representative to the Minsk peace talks, agreed to a version of the
Steinmeier formula outlined in two paragraphs. The letter was also signed by
Boris Gryzlov, the Russian representative to the Trilateral Contact Group in
Minsk, and the representatives of the Donbas self-proclaimed republics.