Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard

15:29:01
01/11/2017

nsn.fm

The politician reminded that at first changes must be made to the Constitution of Ukraine, according to which the republics of Donbass will receive special status…

The US State Department representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker expressed the opinion that the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass shouldn’t participate in the consideration of the question about deploying UN peacekeepers in the zone of the conflict. In response the plenipotentiary representatives of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics Denis Pushilin and Vladislav Deynego in a joint statement suggested that Volker didn’t read the Minsk Agreements.

The former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Oleg Tsarev also thinks this.

“There is the impression that Volker didn’t read the Minsk Agreements. The order of their implementation is clearly documented in them [in the agreements – ed]. Ukraine, in order to not implement them, invents a special order of interpretation of the agreements, and rearranges the sequence of the points. The requests of Donetsk and Lugansk to Volker to read the Minsk Agreements are absolutely correct. Let him read them. It’s a short text, everything is clearly documented. At first changes must be made to the Constitution, then the republics receive special status, and only then is control over border transferred. It is written there in black and white,” noted the politician in a conversation with NSN. “In fact, Volker wants to rewrite the Minsk Agreements. Another order of their implementation means that it already won’t be the Minsk Agreements anymore. Donetsk and Lugansk signed nothing of that kind, and didn’t undertake such obligations”.

According to him, the question of peacekeepers is technical. “How to provide order on the line of demarcation and how to receive confirmation that elections took place without violations — these are two issues that UN officials can deal with. I think that it would suit Donetsk and Lugansk. It is simply not possible to shoot through peacekeepers. Then the shelling would surely stop,” concluded the interlocutor of NSN.

Commenting on Volker’s statement, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that it directly contradicts the efforts of the “Normandy Format” countries concerning a settlement of the situation in Donbass.

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