Ukrainian foreign minister Pristaiko claims that Kiev will be looking for an alternative to the Minsk Agreements if local elections are not held in Donbass this Fall. The DPR plenipotentiary representative to the Trilateral Contact Group’s talks in Minsk, Minister of Foreign Affairs Natalya Nikonorova commented on this statement.
“We would like to remind them once again that before talking about the elections, Ukraine has to implement all the political items of the Complex of Measures that precede them. In this regard, Kiev should also refresh its memory about the commitments that the Ukrainian leader made during the Normandy Four’s summit in Paris.
Particular attention should be paid to the political part of those commitments, the Ukrainian side has to negotiate with representatives of the Republics the approval of all legal aspects of the permanent special status, which, according to the Complex of Measures, involve unlocking the law on the special status of Donbass, drawing up legislative and regulatory acts and agreements stemming from it, as well as the constitutional entrenchment of the special status. Let us not forget the amnesty, too. Moreover, according to the communique following the summit, Ukraine is obliged to implement Steinmeier’s Formula into its law system exactly as agreed in the Normandy format and signed by the Contact Group, without changes or amendments.
It is worth noting that this formula specifies that the local elections in Donbass must be extraordinary and held in accordance with a specific law. This is possible only when all the necessary previous political steps are taken. The implementation of these steps depends only on Kiev.
As for Mr. Pristaiko’s statement about delays in the process of disengagement, he very clearly described what the Ukrainian side is doing — regularly sabotages and delays the fulfillment of its commitments. As a recent example, we can cite the situation at the last meeting in Minsk, when it was the Ukrainian delegation who made no mention whatever of the proposals for the three new disengagement areas as part of the implementation of the Normandy summit’s instructions. At that, we provided our proposals
It is high time that Kiev accepted the inevitable, stopped making up any mythical alternatives to the Minsk Agreements and started to implement, without exception, all items of the compromise that has already been — the Complex of Measures approved by the guarantor countries and finalized by the UN Security Council — consistently and in coordination with representatives of the republics,” Nikonorova stated.