Donetsk, Dec 27 – DAN. Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko deliberately protracts the Minsk process, DPR Head Aleksandr Zakharchenko said on Tuesday.
“The ‘ all-for-all’ principle spelled out in the Minsk agreements does not work, because the Ukrainian president and his government are helpless in this issue and deliberately protract the Minsk process,” Zakharchenko said, according to the statement posted on his website.
He reminded that earlier on Tuesday, DPR and LPR unilaterally handed over two Ukrainian POWs to Kiev as an act of goodwill. “They are Anzhelika Presnyakova and Olga Svorak. We hope that the Ukrainian president will deliver on his promise to hand over to us 15 people by the New Year,” the DPR head said.
He underlined that Donbass was ready to receive all whom Ukraine would set free. “Our goodwill gesture indicates that we’re interested as no one else in our people returning home. The ‘all-for-all’ principle should be inviolable.
We’re ready to talk with any sound forces who realize that it is very important. We are open for dialogue,” Zakharchenko said.
He mentioned in this connection the recent meeting in Minsk with Ukraine’s Verkhovnaya Rada (parliament) deputy Nadezha Savchenko over prisoner exchange issues. “We took a positive view of Nadezhda Savchenko’s initiative and her proposal to have the process take a turn for the better,” Zakharchenko added. *jk