OREANDA-NEWS. The format of the "European troika" - Russia, Germany and France - retains an obvious potential for the future - this is the opinion of the vice-speaker of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev.

The politician wrote on Facebook: "The three largest European leaders are developing a broad agenda, centered on countering the coronavirus pandemic, removing rough edges and launching real interaction on other major cross-border problems".

The priorities of the participants, in his opinion, do not coincide in everything. Not only with regard to Libya, Syria and the JCPOA on Iran, but also on Ukraine and Belarus, as well as on the topic of Alexei Navalny. “I consider it very important that the interlocutors' approaches on the first three topics are close (equidistant assistance to the rapprochement of the positions of the parties to the corresponding conflict situations). It is even more important to confirm the lack of alternatives to the Minsk agreements, this is a powerful signal to Kiev, which was so feared there,” Kosachev emphasized.

He also suggested that in Belarus and Navalny the disagreements, taking into account the previously announced estimates, were the maximum.

The main topic, according to the vice-speaker, was Russia's relations with the European Union. He recalled that "Russia's position is well known, and it has been exhaustively confirmed - we are still ready to develop these relations, but Russia needs reciprocal readiness, not shouts, and even less sanctioned blackmail."

In his opinion, in general, the negotiations were held in a businesslike and frank atmosphere, it was agreed to continue joint work on the entire current agenda, inspires a certain optimism.