Donetsk, Jan 13 - DAN. Ukrainian representatives in the Minsk humanitarian subgroup derailed all its 22 sessions last year, Donetsk People’s Republic ombudswoman, the Republic’s representative in the humanitarian subgroup Darya Morozova told the Donetsk News Agency on Thursday.
“No headway was made on any humanitarian issue at the Minsk venue last year. Ukraine is fully responsible for derailing all the 22 sessions of the humanitarian subgroup,” Morozova said. “The Ukrainian negotiators used any pretext to avoid a productive discussion. On a number of occasions, Kev representatives simply withdrew from the meeting just five minutes after the beginning of the conference.”
The ombudswoman noted that Kiev had never met its commitment on dropping criminal prosecution against participants of the prisoner swaps in 2019 and 2020. It ignored the Republics’ proposals on designing a joint mechanism for the search of persons who went missing during the conflict, and declined an act of goodwill from the DPR and the LPR which wanted to hand over three female prisoners.
“In general, a crisis broke out in the humanitarian subgroup as Ukraine replaced its negotiators. One gets the impression that Kiev deliberately ushered intractable and incompetent representatives into the Minsk process with the sole purpose to delay the work on implementing the Minsk Agreements,” she said.
Until May 2019, Kiev’s interests in the subgroup on humanitarian issues had been defended by Ukrainian parliament member Irina Geraschenko. She was replaced by a deputy from the Servant of the People Party Galina Tretyakova. *jk