The heads of France, Germany and Poland held a meeting to discuss the situation in Ukraine and again called on Russia to engage in a substantive dialogue on security issues. The last time these countries acted together was in February 2014, and also in connection with the Ukrainian events, when their foreign ministers convinced Viktor Yanukovych to sign an agreement with the opposition. A couple of days later, a coup d'état took place in Ukraine. I figured out why the countries returned to the old format of negotiations, and whether it can help in resolving the situation in Ukraine.

Three countries - one goal

French President Emmanuel Macron, after negotiations in Kiev with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, went to Berlin on February 8, where the leaders of Poland and Germany, Andrzej Duda and Olaf Scholz, were already waiting for him. Together they held the Weimar Triangle summit for the first time in 11 years at the level of heads of state. It is noteworthy that France is currently chairing the Council of the European Union, Poland is chairing the OSCE, and Germany is chairing the G7.

The key topic of discussion was the situation around the Ukrainian crisis and ways to resolve it. The German Chancellor assured that the assessments of the situation on this issue by the three allied countries coincide.

"We are all united by one goal - to keep the peace in Europe: through diplomacy, clear signals and willingness to act together," he said.

Duda said that the states participating in the summit do not understand what to expect from a large-scale redeployment of Russian troops, "which the world and Europe have not seen since the Second World War."

The final joint statement, however, did not bring sensations: Germany, France and Poland supported Kiev and turned to Russia, asking them to reduce tension on the border with Ukraine and enter into a “meaningful dialogue” on security in Europe. Any "military aggression" from Moscow would come at a high cost, they warned.

The leaders of the Weimar Triangle also believe that NATO needs to regularly adjust the alliance's strategy towards Russia if the security situation deteriorates. We are talking, for example, about the 2016 initiative "Enhanced Forward Presence", which provides for an increase in the number of NATO troops in Eastern Europe.

Valdai Club expert, researcher at the Center for European Studies at IMI MGIMO Artem Sokolov, in a conversation with, noted that France, Germany and Poland have different approaches to resolving the crisis in the South-East of Ukraine.

“The current negotiations within the framework of the Weimar Triangle continue the diplomatic activity of the leaders of key EU countries.

In fact, this is an attempt to formalize the common position of the EU. But the statement is unlikely to change the position of the Russian leadership, which considers the United States a priority party for negotiations on European security.

However, Poland’s involvement in such formats may slightly reduce the degree of Warsaw’s anti-Russian rhetoric due to the influence of the more restrained positions of France and Germany,” the analyst believes.

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We need to meet more often

The Weimar Triangle format appeared in August 1991 in the German city of Weimar on the initiative of the foreign ministers of the three states to help post-communist Poland integrate more quickly into Euro-Atlantic structures. True, in recent years it has been heard very rarely - at the level of the heads of the three states, the summit was held until this moment back in 2011.

Representatives of the ministries of foreign affairs met more often, and the most significant was their joint meeting on February 21, 2014, in the midst of the events on the Maidan, with its leaders Vitali Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleg Tyahnybok and the then President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.

The countries of the "Weimar Triangle" became the guarantors of the agreement on the settlement of the political crisis between Yanukovych and the opposition. However, just three days later, instead of the end of the crisis, Ukraine faced a coup d'état and Viktor Yanukovych's flight from the country.

Artem Sokolov recalled in a commentary that the intention to update the Weimar Triangle format was spelled out at the level of the coalition agreement of the German government led by Scholz.

“For the new German government, this format is one of the tools to strengthen integration within the EU. The Weimar Triangle can to some extent be considered a continuation of the Franco-German tandem and the 2019 Aachen Cooperation Treaty between them,” the expert said.

Yury Rubinsky, head of the Center for French Studies at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agreed in a conversation with that the meeting of the leaders of the "triangle" followed from the logic of recent events.

In his opinion, it is France, Germany and Poland that are becoming the main ones in the EU in dialogue with Russia.

bbabo.Net