The Ukrainian party spares no efforts to ensure that the Minsk Agreements end in deadlock — Denis Pushilin

The President of Ukraine has no intentions of terminating the war in Donbass in the near future, and at that he is trying to impose his alternative plan to resolve the conflict, which is beneficial to Kiev alone, Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin stated in an interview with the Federal News Agency.

In commenting on the statement by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that he will manage to put an end to the civil war in Donbass before his presidential term is over in 2024, the Head of the DPR observed that several conclusions can be drawn at once following this another promise. Firstly, the President of Ukraine has no actual intentions to terminate the conflict in the short run.

“A year has turned out to be not enough for him to give the AFU the order to cease fire. With no apparent sense of being in the least bit embarrassed, he allocates himself another four years to get this done,” the Head of the DPR said.

Secondly, Denis Pushilin added that Zelensky directly demonstrates his intentions to “shift tactics” in case “if the Minsk process won’t work.”

“Proceeding from this, the reason why the Ukrainian party is bending every effort to make sure that the Minsk Agreements end in deadlock becomes obvious. Kiev seeks to impose its plan which is beneficial exclusively to Ukraine,” Denis Pushilin said.

Thirdly, the Head of the DPR emphasised that either of the two options is taking place: either Zelensky is misinformed by the Ukrainian representatives to the Contact Group or Zelensky, being aware of the true picture of the situation, misinforms the public, stating that after each meeting they have taken a “step forward.”

“This is about the protocol of decisions reached at each meeting of the Contact Group. Throughout the entire negotiation process, our party has insisted on forming outcome documents but Ukraine has always steered away from such an idea. Finally, the protocol of one of the meetings was agreed and signed this March. Since then, after each negotiation round, our party has been preparing, signing and sending a document to the Ukrainian representatives, who, regrettably, have failed to reaffirm their stance and abandonment of issues by their signature at least once,” Denis Pushilin said.

According to him, such a cynical and irresponsible behavior of the Ukrainian authorities has been of no surprise for Donetsk for a rather long while.

“But manuscripts do not burn, and facts remain facts. We have published some protocols so that the absurdity of such statements as those made by Zelensky becomes apparent,” Denis Pushilin concluded.