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However, others will welcome the news as after five years the Minsk II accords agreed between Russia, Germany and France have stalled and all the deadlines in the deal have been missed.
French President Emmanuel Macron has already thrown his weight behind the deal. “We must move on the basis of the Steinmeier formula. It is about the implementation of the Minsk agreements, about the demarcation line, about Crimea, about the Donbas,” Macron said during a speech at a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) session in Strasbourg on the same day.
Technically Russia was not officially the counterparty in the Minsk II deal, which was signed by members of the Trilateral Contact Group, which represents the government in Kyiv and the rebel commanders.
The Steinmeier formula was proposed by former German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in an effort to break the deadlock over the Minsk II deal.
The agreement lays the groundwork for upcoming Normandy Four talks between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.
However, there has clearly been a lot going on behind the scenes in preparation for this meeting. The European leaders German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Macron both clearly see a window of opportunity with the election of Zelenskiy to bring the conflict to an end.
Macron has been visibly active, and travelled to Russia to hold talks with Putin as well as calling Zelenskiy on the night of his election victory in April. Then within months of taking office Russia and Ukraine agreed to a prison of war exchange, the first significant exchange in five years of conflict. Now the Steinmeier formula has been introduced, which forms the basis of a compromise that could lead to a withdrawal of Russian troops from the Donbas.
The opposition to any compromise with Russia will be strong. Within hours of the announcement former president Petro Poroshenko issued a statement that the deal would lead to the lifting of sanctions on Russia. Poroshenko represents the hard line nationalists' view that Ukraine should join Nato and with the west help expel Russian troops from the Donbas by force. The western leaders are very reluctant to go down this road because of the obvious risk of escalation and ending up in a major European war with Russia. While Ukraine’s relations with Nato are particularly warm, Nato has not formally offered membership to Ukraine or even suggested that negotiations could begin for Ukraine to join the Nato Membership Action Plan, the precursor to membership.
2.2​ ​Naftogaz base case scenario: Russia will cut the gas off on January 1, 2020
Ukraine's state-owned natural gas monopoly​ ​Naftogaz​ sees a halt by Russia's Gazprom to gas transit shipments via Ukraine from January 1, as a base-case scenario, Naftogaz's executive director of Yuriy Vitrenko wrote on his Facebook page September 19.
The statement followed the same days meeting in Brussels failed to start talks on a new contract for gas transit through the Ukrainian gas transmission system.
7​ UKRAINE Country Report​ October 2019 ​ ​www.intellinews.com