The office of the President of Ukraine demonstrated yesterday a stunning level of hypocrisy and complete divorcement from reality, DPR Plenipotentiary Representative and Minister of Foreign Affairs Natalya Nikonorova said on September 3, commenting on the document that Kiev published after the Contact Group meeting.
“We repeat once again: the Contact Group has not reached any agreement on draft documents related to demining operations or withdrawal of forces and weapons at the last meeting. As we have repeatedly stated, the parties indeed have a preliminary consensus on these drafts, but this is not identical to final approval and signature.
It is hard to guess how many times we will have to explain to Kiev representatives our basic, principled position on this issue in order that they finally assimilate it, but we have to repeat it over and over again: until the Ukrainian authorities begin to take seriously their obligations under the Minsk Agreements and stop acting contrary to these agreements, no real progress or constructive coordination will happen in the Contact Group. It concerns absolutely all directions and areas of work at the Minsk venue. That is why we demand that Ukrainian representatives address the issue regarding the Verkhovna Rada decree on local elections, which contradicts the Complex of Measures. Our logic is plain and clear — it is impossible to agree on certain openings in one working group and expect the Ukrainian party to implement them if Kiev grossly violates the fundamental aspects of the Minsk Agreements at the same time on the other track, the political one in this case.
Instead of finally listening to the second party to the conflict—real representatives of Donbass rather than puppet immigrants sitting out in Ukraine—and begin to work with us reasonably and appropriately to reconsider the acts of the Verkhovna Rada that contradict the Complex of measures, representatives of Kiev for some reason take Contact Group meeting as a venue for endless provocations, fakes and reality distortion. We call on Ukraine to realize that the main document of the Minsk Package, namely the Complex of Measures, has such a name precisely because the conflict resolution is possible only with a comprehensive approach, and only in case of unconditional and substantive, not illusory commitment of the parties to all the obligations under these agreements without exception,” Nikonorova stressed.
