Poroshenko seeks joint projects with Germany to restore eastern Ukraine

At talks with the German foreign minister on Tuesday, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko suggested that the two countries launch joint projects in eastern Ukraine “to restore the region’s economy and create new jobs”.
The president informed Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier about the implementation of a peace plan to settle the situation in the restive east, in particular about a ceasefire in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
“Unfortunately, we are fixing violations of the ceasefire regime from the opposite side. Last night another eight incidents were fixed, in which one military was killed and seven injured,” the presidential press service quoted him as saying.
Poroshenko also thanked Germany for backing the conclusions of the EU Council at the foreign ministerial level as to the end of the first phase of EU-Ukraine Action Plan on Visa Liberalization, and appealed for assistance in the second phase to have visa-free travels of Ukrainian nationals to EU countries.
The German foreign minister, for his part, welcomed the second meeting on the conflict settlement held in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, praising the activity of “Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin, Ukraine’s second President Leonid Kuchma, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov and OSCE’s special envoy Heidi Tagliavini. “A conversation on possible conditions for a truce, conditions on which rebels could lay down arms and agree to the use of an extended OSCE observer mission - is a major step forward in itself,” the foreign minister said.