The Ukrainian party continues to itch for an excuse to justify its reluctance and inability to withdraw units at least on three sites, Alexey Nikonorov, the DPR official representative to the security subgroup of the Contact Group in Minsk, stated.
“Today, Ukraine’s representative to the working subgroup on security issues made a number of statements, traditionally defying logic. In his opinion, the Russian Federation is blocking the approval of new sites for forces and assets disengagement, and this disengagement of forces and assets supposedly should be performed from the September 2014 line, despite the fact that Paragraph 1 of the Framework Decision clearly says that the disengagement is to be carried out from the current positions, that is from the actual contact line.
Based on this constancy, the conclusion suggests itself that Ukraine’s representatives, when signing the Minsk Agreements, never planned to implement them, therefore they have continued to live in the fictional world of war with Russia for six years now, justifying their failure.
It is noteworthy that the representative of Ukraine directly says that Ukrainian units will continue to engage artillery and mortars in response to the alleged threat from the DPR People’s Militia units. This not only contradicts the additional measures agreed in July 2019, but also confirms that the AFU do not respect the ceasefire and, moreover, are not going to respect it.
Proceeding from the public statements and actions of the Ukrainian representatives, the obvious conclusion suggests itself that Kiev is incapable of fulfilling any order of the Normandy Format countries leaders, including ensuring a stable ceasefire and carrying out disengagement on three new sites. While civilians continue to suffer from daily shelling, the Ukrainian party won’t take a single step on the path to peace, increasingly confirming the chosen path of war,” he said.