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Ukraine contact group to meet in Minsk on September 1

The next meeting of the trilateral contact group of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE will take place in Minsk on September 1, Dzmitry Mironchyk, spokesman for the Belarusian foreign ministry, told BelaPAN.

He said that the meeting’s time and exact venue and the composition of the delegations would be announced later.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko suggested at the Customs Union-Ukraine-EU summit earlier this week that the group hold regular meetings in Minsk, and the proposal was reportedly welcomed by other participants.

The contact group held its first meeting in Kyiv in late June. The second meeting took place in Minsk on July 31.

Participating in the meeting were former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, OSCE envoy Heidi Tagliavini, Mikhail Zurabov, the Russian ambassador to Ukraine, and representatives of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, including Andrei Purgin, first deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

Another meeting of the group was held on August 11, with participants discussing humanitarian aid for residents of Ukraine’s war-hit Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. // BelaPAN