In late August, the foreign affairs minister of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov, said one of the preconditions to holding a high-level meeting of the Normandy Four is “the need to put down on paper the formula by the former chief of the German Foreign Affairs Ministry and current President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the “Steinmeier formula” will be discussed by state leaders during the Normandy Four meeting.
Miroslav Lajčák, the chairperson-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who is also Slovakia’s minister of foreign and European affairs, said Ukraine should use the so-called “Steinmeier plan” to have the Minsk agreements implemented.