Head of the DPR Denis Pushilin commented on the main results of the Normandy Format meeting of the leaders of four states — the Russian Federation, Germany, France and Ukraine, which took place the day before, on December 9, in Paris. According to the correspondent of the Official website of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Head of State stressed several important points directly related to the current political and humanitarian situation.
“Yesterday there took place the indeed long-awaited Normandy Format meeting, because it had been blocked for a long time. Following its results, we can tell and determine its most important points. These, of course, include the fact that the new President of Ukraine has both documented, clearly confirmed and undertook the obligations to implement the Minsk agreements fully and rigorously.
As for the targeted points, among the important ones, of course, there is an agreement on the prisoners’ swap. This is important because our people, who have been languishing in the SBU dungeons and other places of detention for several years, will finally return home. We are looking forward to it. And Ukraine was delaying and slowing down the process on this matter in every possible way. Now we hope that these people will return home before the New Year.
As for the disengagement of forces and hardware, we can express our disappointment in this regard. Because at the level of the Normandy Format leaders’ assistants an agreement had been reached on disengagement along the entire contact line. And this would really be a serious step towards establishing peace and tranquility for the people living on the contact line. These are the people who have been awakening for six years now thinking whether their housing had been destroyed or not, whether any of their relatives had suffered, got injured or even killed. They have no confidence in this. The process of withdrawing forces and hardware along the entire contact line would help them. However, Ukraine has demonstrated weakness in this matter. And neither reasons no excuses are of any importance here.
Ukraine has agreed only to the three sites to be discussed. Then a very complex and painstaking process is to be held to disengage forces and hardware in these areas. As we have seen, it took three years to bring this process to the end on the previous three pilot sites! This is likely of Ukraine with which we are dealing. Therefore, we are quite pessimistic about Ukraine on this issue, because we may again hear ridiculous excuses from the President that he really wanted to do this, but fails to succeed, he has a new Maidan, the battalions dictate their rules and he has to make excuses again — alas, that’s the Ukraine we are dealing with.
Another important thing for us that has been voiced is, of course, the initiative of President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin on the humanitarian situation on the contact line, which implies increasing the number of checkpoints. This would make the transition procedures easier. This is really important. This is the moment that will make easier the life of our people who are forced to cross the contact line, whether they are pensioners who visit Ukraine to get their retirement payments, or our other citizens. There is quite a large number of those people, and we should make their life easier. We fully support this initiative and, of course, for our part, we will take all the necessary steps.
Well, as for some kind of a “humorous component”, because Zelensky, unfortunately, couldn’t go without it, it concerns the moment when he began to talk about negotiators. Let me remind you that when the parties are in the negotiation process, they do not choose negotiators on their own. This is beyond the scope. It would be the same if we chose negotiators representing Ukraine. But we do not do this and do not even raise these issues. What does this emphasize? The fact that Zelensky is afraid of even those negotiators who are engaged now. I can interpret it in no other way,” Denis Pushilin said.