MOSCOW/KIEV, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of the "Normandy Four" countries held a phone conversation Monday to discuss the settlement of the armed conflicts in southeastern Ukraine, said the Kremlin and the press office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
During the two-hour conversation, Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron listened to reports of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission.
The leaders then exchanged views on the situation, taking into account the serious disruptions of the implementation of the Minsk peace agreements reached in 2015, the Kremlin said in a statement.
"Putin outlined in detail the Russian approaches to all key provisions of the agreements," it said.
The parties agreed to maintain further contacts, including at the highest level, the Kremlin said, without providing more details.
Poroshenko, according to his press office's statement, called the last days of July the "bloodiest" in 2017 and urged Moscow to immediately stop its "aggressive" actions and arms deliveries to the territories occupied by pro-Russian insurgents.
He also stressed the importance of introducing a U.N. peacekeeping mission to the independence-seeking Donbas region.
According to the Ukrainian statement, Macron and Merkel noted the inadmissibility of any statements that undermine the territorial integrity of Ukraine, in particular, on the creation of a new state called Malorossiya or Little Russia, a plan declared by Donbas leaders last week.
The parties decided to continue to work on a road map for the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
For this purpose, a meeting of foreign policy advisers to the Normandy Four leaders should be convened in the second half of August, the statement said.
A civil war broke out in Donbas between government troops and pro-Russian separatists following the February 2014 revolution that led to the fall of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Violence has been plaguing the region since then.
The Normandy Four, or the Normandy Format, is a diplomatic group of leaders from the four countries set up to resolve the Ukrainian crisis in accordance with the Minsk deals.
Several rounds of Normandy Format meetings have been held so far, but mutual accusations of cease-fire violations by the Ukrainian government and the Donbas insurgents made these meetings largely fruitless.
