KIEV, May 10 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Thursday discussed the possible deployment of UN peacekeeping troops in Ukraine's eastern region of Donbas with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, Poroshenko's press service said.
During their meeting in the western German city of Aachen, Poroshenko said that the presence of the blue helmets in Donbas would comply with Minsk agreements, according to a statement on the Ukrainian presidential website.
"The security component of the Minsk agreements cannot be fulfilled without a full-fledged peacekeeping mission," Poroshenko was quoted as saying in the statement.
According to the statement, Merkel and Marcon will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month.
On Sept. 5, 2017, Putin said Moscow would ask the UN Security Council to send peacekeepers to patrol the contact line in Donbas, where armed confrontation between Ukrainian government troops and pro-independence rebels had been underway since April 2014.
Meanwhile, Kiev said it would agree to the deployment of the UN patrol only if the troops would be stationed across the whole area controlled by the rebels, including the Ukrainian-Russian border.
The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France form a diplomatic group, the so-called Normandy Four, which was set up to resolve the Ukrainian crisis in accordance with the Minsk deals.
The Minsk peace agreements, reached in September 2014 and February 2015 respectively, envisage a ceasefire, a withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the contact line, a prisoner exchange and local elections, among other measures.
