In the photo: the captured Ukrainian vessels at the port of Kerch.

Referring to Ukrainian and Russian official sources, the news agencies report that the Ukrainian artillery boats Berdyansk and Nikopol, and the tugboat Yany Kapu have been towed from the seaport of Kerch to the earlier specified point in the neutral waters of the Black Sea and then handed over to the Ukrainian side.

A year ago, on November 25, 2018, the Russian coast guards fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels attempting to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait on their way to the port of Mariupol. The crews of the ships were arrested on the charge of illegal entering the Russian territorial waters.

On May 25, 2019, the United Nations International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea resolved that there’d been no violation committed by the Ukrainian Navy and that the Russian Federation had to free sailors and return the ships to Ukraine. This autumn Russia returned the Ukrainian sailors within the framework of a bilateral exchange of detanees.

It should be noted that until the last moment the Russian Foreign Office kept saying that the captured vessels would be returned only after a summit meeting of the Normandy Format.

And finally, the warships have been returned to Ukraine. The handover took place immediately after Paris, Berlin and Kyiv had confirmed their intention to hold a summit of the Normandy Four on December 9.

And although Moscow has not officially confirmed this date, many political observers claim that the gesture of the Kremlin is a silent consent of Putin to meet with the Ukrainian, French and German leaders within the Normandy Format. After all, Ukraine has fulfilled all conditions necessary for holding the December 9 meeting in Paris. For instance, the agreements reached by the Normandy Four in 2016 have been fully realized: prisoners have been exchanged, the Steinmeier Formula has been agreed upon, the troops have been disengaged at three specified sections of the frontline.

However, at the last minute Moscow has put forward one more condition concerning the special status of Donbas the term of which expires at the end of this year. Moscow wants to know whether the Ukrainian authorities are intended to make this status temporary or permanent and when Kyiv plans to hold local elections the focal point of which should be the giving of the special status to Donbas.

The press secretarty of the Russian President insisted the other day that there was no direct connection between the upcoming Paris meeting and the law on the special status, but nevertheless he called the latter the corner stone of the entire peace process in Donbas. In other words, Moscow does believe that such a connection exists.

It is highly unlikely that the special status law will be passed prior the Paris meeting. But Moscow apparently wants for the essential provisions of the special status to be determined already today so that later, in Paris, they could be translated into a law.

Some political analysts claim that preparations for the upcoming Paris meeting and Russia’s symbolic step concerning the return of the captured Ukrainian sea ships may testify to the intention of the negotiating sides to agree their positions on the special status of Donbas.
It’s quite possible that this question will be the main topic of a discussion during the current official visit of German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to Kyiv.

On Monday afternoon, November 18, the Kremlin finally confirmed officially Russia’s participation in the summit meeting of the Normandy Four scheduled for December 9 in Paris.

The newspaper Holos Ukrainy