Donetsk, Jan 25 - DAN. Kiev has no chances to avoid meeting the political commitments within the Package of Measures, DPR representative at the talks Natalia Mikhailova said after a session of the Contact Group political subgroup on Tuesday.
“It’s absolutely obvious that nothing has changed since last year and that Ukrainian representatives continue to sit on the other side of the screen with just one purpose: to delay the negotiations for as along a possible, so that the Minsk Agreements and the Package of Measures have no chances to be implemented,” Mikhailova said after the Tuesday session. “Today, they made as if they were discussing special status issues, though they were talking about all-Ukrainian decentralisation parameters instead.”
A lack of political will in Kiev is not the pretext for forgetting that Ukraine has commitments to the Republics’ population under the Minsk Agreements, which will have to be met anyway.
The Agreements dated September 5 and 20, 2014 and February 12, 2015 forged by the Contact Group in Minsk make groundwork for a peaceful settlement of the Donbass conflict. The Contact Group set forth a peace plan and agreed a ceasefire and then adopted the Memorandum on ceasefire implementation and later on the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements. It envisioned immediate and comprehensive ceasefire in Donbass, withdrawal of heavy weapons, establishment of security zones and discussion of the modalities for the resumption of payment of pensions and allowances to DPR and LPR citizens.
The political part of the agreement required Kiev to grant a special status to Donbass and carry out a Constitutional reform in Ukraine which should result in deep decentralisation. The reform has to take into account the specifics of the conflict-affected areas and be coordinated with representatives of these areas.*jk