French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visited Moscow for several hours on Friday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on settling the Ukraine crisis, could have left foreign political experts from their teams in Moscow to draw up a settlement plan based on the European leaders' proposals they had brought to Moscow, a source with knowledge of the situation said.
"Certainly, the leaders came not alone, and they definitely left their foreign political specialists in Moscow to work on the text that would be presented for a top-level telephone conversation in the Normandy format to take place on Sunday," the source said according to Interfax News Agency.
"It is clear that very solid work is going on," he added.
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov had told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that joint work was being done based on outcomes of the negotiations between Putin, Merkel, and Hollande to draw up a joint document on settling the conflict in Ukraine, which would include Putin's and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's proposals.
The text is supposed to be presented to all conflicting parties for endorsement, he said.
"Then the work will be continued, and its preliminary outcomes will be summed up in a top-level telephone conversation in the Normandy format on Sunday," Peskov said.