No progress has been reached during the Contact Group meeting in terms of security issues or under any agenda item. According to the DPR MFA, Ukraine could not generate anything new except an updated composition of its delegation.
“The sharp escalation that led to victims among civilians, including five minors, as well as nostalgic references of the Ukrainian party to the security proposals of 2018 suggest that Kiev is trying to continue Poroshenko’s policy. It was this “policy” that led to the strongest attacks on the Republic, as well as the tensest situation in the negotiation process.
At a time when it is extremely important to agree on additional measures to control the ceasefire as soon as possible, representatives of Kiev are bringing the negotiation process to the point of absurdity, pretending that they have not received our draft proposals on these measures. We remind that the Ukrainian party not only saw these drafts at the previous meetings, but also actively participated in their discussion, stripping out of them the most essential provisions, in particular, the ban on any kind of firing, intelligence and subversive activities, as well as the need for operational communication.
We stress once again that our top priority in the work of the security group is the urgent approval and signing of additional measures that would strengthen the existing indefinite truce. The mediators to the negotiation process, the OSCE and the Russian Federation, also supported this urgent need. We hope that through joint efforts we will be able to overcome Ukraine’s unwillingness to get its representative to sign a commitment to abide by all the terms of the indefinite ceasefire,” the DPR plenipotentiary told.
The subgroups for humanitarian and economic matters continued their work in accordance with the agenda. New representatives of the Ukrainian party are just beginning to get acquainted with the topics under discussion, they did not come to any concrete decisions on these matters.