Donetsk, Dec 5 - DAN. The Ukrainian leadership must start implementing the Minsk accords to establish peace in the region instead of threatening the Donbass people, Donetsk People’s Republic parliamentarian Vladislav Rusanov said on Thursday.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in an interview, which was conducted jointly by Time, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and Gazeta Wyborcza, that “there are people who are for Ukraine. There are also lost ones. And finally, there are those who are for Russia; let the latter leave.” In the first half of November, online media published a letter by Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine Alexey Danilov to the president, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine and the prime minister. According to the plan proposed in Danilov’s letter, a majority of Donbass residents are not “pro-Ukrainian” and have to be criminally prosecuted and resettled to Russia, or central or western Ukraine for “correction.” The letter provoked a scandal in Donbass; two weeks later, Danilov told Radio Liberty that the document was a fake and put the blame on Russia.
“We call upon President Zelensky and Ukrainian officials to stop their verbiage and threats against Donbass residents and start implementation of the Package of Measures and not to act recklessly,” Rusanov said.
Any plans for the deportation or persecution of dissenters are a dead end, “history shows enough cases where such policy resulted in failure and even domestic degradation,” he said.
“Today, we see Ukraine engaging in self-destruction while extolling Ukrainian culture over others. This breaks the value system for several generations; the benchmark dates or events are purposefully erased and the significance of many policymakers, activists and researchers is twisted. If the whole Ukraine is ready to put up with a bunch of pseudo policymakers trampling upon the memory of our common heroic past, Donbass will not allow it to happen,” the parliamentarian said.
Earlier, member of the DPR parliament committee on security and defence Alexander Kurenkov said that Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky’s statements on the Donbass residents who had obtained Russian citizenship were a blatant violation of all moral norms.*jk