Donetsk, Feb 17 - DAN. Ukrainian authorities increase the intensity of strikes instead of offering peaceful solutions to the Donbass conflict, Donetsk People’s Republic representative at the Contact Group talks, DPR Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova told the Donetsk News Agency on Wednesday.

“The Contact Group talks on Wednesday over political issues have again shown that Kiev is absolutely unwilling to work productively at the Minsk venue <... >. Ukraine flatly rejects any our proposal aimed at unblocking the talks.  For its part, Kiev offers nothing expect an increasing number of strikes at our territory, new lawbills hurting our rights, aggressive rhetoric from mass media outlets and outright sabotage of productive work at the peace talks,” she said.

Nikonorova said that during the talks, Ukrainian delegation representatives spend time on discussing the topics unrelated to the approved agenda. “The situation at the Minsk talks contributes to increasingly pessimistic predictions regarding the prospects for a peaceful settlement in Donbass,” she said.

Earlier reports said that Donetsk had called for an international conference on implementation of the “Minsk-2” accords which will involve the Donbass Republics, Ukraine, the mediators in the person of the OSCE and the Minsk Agreements guarantor countries as well as UN member-states representatives. The Belarussian capital was proposed as the conference venue.*jk