YEAR'S FIRST MEETING OF CONTACT GROUP FOR DONETSK BASIN SETTLEMENT SEES NEW RUSSIAN REPRESENTATIVE, NEW HOPES, PROPOSALS FROM BOTH RUSSIAN, UKRAINIAN SIDES, BUT FAMILIAR PROBLEMS STILL REMAIN AS EXPERTS ANTICIPATE ... NO NEW BREAKTHROUGHS IN THE NEAR FUTURE ... KIEV PREPARES FOR MINSK 3. (By Tatyana Ivzhenko. Nezavisimaya gazeta, Jan. 13, 2016, p. 1. Condensed text:) Today, the contact group for Donetsk Basin settlement will hold its first meeting of the year in Minsk. December ended Kiev tacitly agreeing to an automatic extension of the Minsk 2 agreements, which were approved in February 2015 [see Current Digest, Vol.67, No.7, pp.3-7] as a roadmap for the implementation of the Minsk 1 agreements [see Current Digest Vol.66, No.37, pp.3-6]. Kiev believes that in January, a new process will begin - Minsk 3. There are no documents yet, as the parties are only groping for compromise solutions. ... Major changes are expected at the talks, considering that in late December, Russia appointed Gryzlov as its official representative in the contact On Monday [Jan. 11], Gryzlov visited the Ukrainian capital. visit was not announced in advance, so journalists learned about it essentially by chance: A Rossiya airline plane caught the attention of passengers at Borispol airport, since the airline is banned from flying to Ukraine. ... On the same day, responding to official inquiries from the media, the Ukrainian State Aviation Service said that the special flight from Russia was allowed to land at the written request of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. It turned out that Russia's new representative in the contact group, Gryzlov, arrived in Kiev as a matter of urgency. He met Ukrainian representative Leonid Kuchma. [Ukrainian] President Pyotr Poroshenko was not in the capital that day: In the morning, his press service announced the president was scheduled to visit Ternopol Province. Ukrainian authorities did not comment on Gryzlov's arrival. ... When the news of the visit broke, Kuchma's press secretary Darya Olifer wrote on social media that the Ukrainian and Russian representatives held talks as part of preparations for a Jan. 13 meeting of the contact group in Minsk. She commented that earlier in the day, Kuchma had a meeting Martin Sajdik, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's representative in the Trilateral Contact Group, in the course of which they also discussed the agenda of the upcoming session of the group. ... Toward evening, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksei Makeyev, on Channel 5, clarified: Boris Gryzlov came not as a Russian Federation representative for bilateral talks. He came within the framework of this (Minsk - NG) trilateral format, which is an important mechanism for settling the situation in the Donetsk Basin. Therefore, we regard this visit solely as his (Gryzlov's - NG) participation in the Trilateral Contact Group. However, the question as to what prompted the Russian and Ukrainian representatives to meet two days ahead of a scheduled meeting in Minsk remained unanswered. What issues required a preliminary and almost discussion? ... Stepan Gavrich, former first deputy head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, described the situation as a return to the practice of secret diplomacy. He remarked that the Russian representative arrived in Kiev with messages we know nothing about, and we don't know what proposals today actually come from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin or what bargaining schemes are at work here. ... Statements exchanged by the two countries' presidents could be key to understanding the situation. Ahead of Gryzlov's visit, Ukrainian media cited Russian President Vladimir Putin's interview the German newspaper Bild [see the second feature in this issue, below]: The fundamentals of what needs to be done to implement the Minsk agreements are the responsibility of the current Kiev authorities. You cannot require Moscow to do something that Kiev needs to do. For example, the main, key issue in the settlement process is political in nature, and the core is Constitutional reform. This is Point 11 of the Minsk agreements. It states unequivocally that Constitutional reform must be carried out, and these decisions are not to be made in Moscow. ... When the Russian representative was already in Kiev, Pyotr Poroshenko, in Ternopol, presented his vision: We stress in no uncertain terms that all points of Minsk (the Minsk agreements - NG) must be implemented. As Russia has failed to meet its obligations, we insist that in 2016, specific deadlines be set on all steps stipulated by the Minsk agreements.. . . ... Kuchma and Gryzlov could have discussed a draft plan for the phased implementation of [Minsk] provisions, starting from the Constitutional reform that Vladimir Putin mentioned and mutual guarantees in the form of specific deadlines that Pyotr Poroshenko spoke about.