If the stubbornness with which the Ukrainian authorities repeat their mantra about the need to amend the Minsk Agreements were used for a direct and constructive implementation of these agreements, peace would have come to Donbass long time ago, DPR Minister of Foreign Affairs Natalya Nikonorova stated.
“Instead of focusing on the real peaceful solution, Kiev shows exactly the opposite by regularly declaring its desire to review the Complex of Measures and change its sequence to their advantage. At the same time, the representatives of Ukraine like to cite their president’s stance, who allegedly claimed during the Normandy Four’s meeting that the Minsk Agreements must be amended.
However, all the joint decisions and instructions following the summit in Paris are set out in the communique, and it mentions no word about any changes to the wording of the Complex of Measures. Which is not surprising, since the Minsk Agreements acquired the status of an international legal document as early as in February 2015 and is approved by the UN Security Council, which means that it is not only inappropriate, but also impossible to make any changes to the document of such a level.
It is noteworthy that the Minsk Agreements are a hard-won compromise, which helped prevent the continuation of the war that Kiev unleashed against its own people, and it still helps. Any reconsideration of it can affect the situation in the region. That is why we stay committed to the Complex of Measures and strictly fulfil our part of the obligations. However, the compromise implies that both parties have mutual obligations.
We call on the Ukrainian negotiators in Minsk not to follow the path of Poroshenko’s team and not to waste time on meaningless attempts to revise the Complex of Measures in order to remove from it all Kiev’s commitments to the people of Donbass. They should finally start implementing this document in a meaningful way.
In particular, the representatives of Ukraine to the political group should not engage in media provocations, but focus directly on their activities in the Minsk process, first of all, on the elaboration and coordination of all legal aspects of the special status with us to ensure its effect on a permanent basis (the enactment of the law on special status of Donbass by integrating the compromise Steinmeier formula into it, the elaboration and coordination of acts and agreements arising therefrom and the enshrinement of the special status on a permanent basis).
Also, we shall remind that the principle of synchronization and simultaneous implementation of steps in the field of politics and security was agreed upon a few years ago, also as part of the Normandy Format. Any other sequence is only a fantasy from some representatives of Kiev, who are poorly familiar with the history of the negotiation process for solving the internal conflict in Donbass,” Natalya Nikonorova stated.