Given that the Donetsk People’s Republic had submitted to the Contact Group a detailed «road map» for the Donbass conflict settlement, the DPR Minister of Foreign Affairs Natalia Nikonorova made a relevant statement.
“I would like to repeat that the Package of Measures is not just a paper, not just an agreement, but a document approved by the UN Security Council Resolution. Accordingly, we have no right to depart from the provisions set in this document. If the Ukrainian party wants to do this, it is necessary to go through the entire procedure again. Again, there must be an agreement with our party because our representatives signed this document on behalf of the Republics. There is a concise document which can be «intensified» with details. We have specifically prescribed them,” Natalia Nikonorova noted.
According to the DPR Minister of Foreign Affairs, the representatives of our Republic have taken into account several points presented by the Ukrainian party.
“In fact, the negotiation process is blocked today by Ukraine, since its parliament, a political body that will have to adopt the relevant legal acts aimed at implementing the Minsk agreements, makes completely different decisions. We understand that the political process is thereby bifurcated in Ukraine as, on the one hand, negotiations are underway to implement the Package of Measures within the Minsk Agreements and to resolve the current conflict. On the other hand, there is the parliament, which, in a completely different plane, adopts normative legal acts containing norms that directly contradict the same very Package of Measures and the Minsk Agreements. We understand that the official representatives of Ukraine participating in this negotiation process do not have the mandate to make any decisions, to agree upon any actions, because the parliament is functioning in a completely different political plane. We needed to unblock the negotiation process and combine these two bifurcated political processes in Ukraine into one, so that the parliament, by its resolution, would approve this detailed action plan and thereby confirm Ukraine’s adherence to the Minsk agreements, empowering the negotiators to nevertheless implement the Minsk agreements,» Natalia Nikonorovа said.
She emphasized that in order to prevent the Ukrainian party from amending the Package of Measures, our party had detailed an action plan, which includes all the legal acts that will need to be coordinated with the Republics and then adopted by the Parliament of Ukraine.
“On November 4, Ukraine was supposed to submit, in response to our draft, its action plan for the Minsk agreements implementation. Unfortunately, no such project was presented by Ukraine yesterday. However, it should be noted that Mr. Kravchuk sent a letter promising to submit such a project later. Hopefully, there were specific dates, and now we are waiting for November 6th. By the way, today Leonid Makarovich made statements on the contents of this action plan. So far, the forecasts are disappointing, if we rely on these statements. It can be concluded that Ukraine will try to twist the Package of Measures and the Minsk Agreements in this document. But it is too early to comment on this,” the DPR Foreign Minister said.
She added that the Package of Measures is abstract about the idea that a constitutional reform should be carried out taking into account the decentralization and the specific constraints of certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Our plan has already specifically prescribed the norms that should be contained in this constitutional reform.
“As for the procedure for transferring control at the border, the Package of Measures clearly indicates this point, saying that this can happen after a comprehensive political settlement. As for the decisions to be made and the actions to take place within this framework, all these details are described in our action plan. We need to unblock the negotiation process. This is our next step forward. This is an attempt to help Ukraine get out of the situation into which it has driven itself and, unfortunately, the implementation of the Minsk agreements,” Natalia Nikonorova stressed.
