“I think the agreement concluded in Minsk is excellent news, we will evaluate it together”. This was stated by the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, upon his arrival at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, where the summit of EU heads of state and government is being held in the afternoon, which will be dominated by the latest developments of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.
The meeting was introduced by speeches by French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took part in the negotiations in the Belarusian capital between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko himself will be present at the EU summit.
To a reporter who asked him whether economic sanctions against Ukrainian separatists will still be discussed, Juncker replied: "I believe very sincerely and subject to scrutiny by the European Council (of the Minsk agreements, ed), that this is not the 'time for sanctions'. The new sanctions, which will add 19 Russian and Ukrainian individuals to the 132 already on the black list and 9 entities to the 28 already affected, were decided in recent days but frozen until February 16, pending the outcome of the Minsk summit.
As for the previously decided sanctions, the decision to extend them by six months was taken by the extraordinary council last week.
