The fourth informal meeting between the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, will be held in St Petersburg on the 10 June. The heads of the foreign services will discuss the course of the implementation of the agreements reached at the previous trilateral negotiations in Kaliningrad in May 2011, Berlin in March 2012 and Warsaw in May 2013. They will also review the prospects of interaction of our countries in the trilateral format in different international arenas for the purposes of forming a generally positive political climate in the Euro-Atlantic space, with regard to Russia-EU and Russia-NATO relations.

The main attention will be devoted to the issues of the settlement of the acute internal political crisis in Ukraine, the tasks of stopping bloodshed and the real launching of mechanisms of an inclusive political dialogue in this country. The participants of this meeting will also touch upon the state of affairs in Syria and Afghanistan, as well as other topical issues on the international agenda.

In past years, trilateral cooperation between Russia, Germany and Poland was developing in different directions of mutual interest, and was being filled with specific content. There were regular informal consultations on different international issues within the ambit of the foreign services, and international contacts between permanent representatives of the three countries in international bodies in Brussels, Vienna, Geneva and Strasbourg.

A four party (Russia-Germany-Poland-France) scientific and politological project, IDEAS, to discuss the ways of implementation of the tasks of formation of the Euro-Atlantic and the Eurasian "security community" set at the OSCE summit in Astana in 2010, was successfully implemented under the aegis of the OSCE.

Seminars of young diplomats of the three countries, the participants of which discussed issues of modern European and global policy, were held in Moscow and Warsaw. There are plans to continue the practice of interaction in the preparation of diplomatic staff, which has proved itself well.

The exchange of opinions between academic and politological institutes with the involvement of non-governmental organisations, including on historical topics, is becoming substantial. International scientific conferences of historians, devoted to the memorable dates in our joint history, were organised under the patronage of the foreign ministries of our countries in 2009-2012 in Warsaw, Berlin and Moscow. The latest of them on the topic "Images of the Second World War and their influence on international relations" was held in Moscow on the 20-21 January 2012. Plans to conduct trilateral symposiums are being developed.

Inter-university ties are developing successfully. In 2010 the Trialogue education project, with the participation of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Nicolaus Copernicus University (Torun, Poland) and Viadrina European University (Frankfurt (Oder) Germany) was launched. Scientific conferences and summer schools for students are being conducted in the territory of the member states of the project every year. One such meeting, on the topic "Russia and Europe: historical experience and strategic partnership", was held on the 25-26 January in Kaliningrad.

The Russian-Polish agreement on local near-border movements, which was actively supported by Germany, is functioning effectively. The work on the project of the pan-European railway transport corridor No.2 (Berlin-Nizhny Novgorod) continues.

Interregional ties, cultural and humanitarian contacts, youth and educational exchanges all have significant potential.

9 June 2014