The February 17 round of negotiations of the Contact Group on political issues has once again confirmed the absolute unwillingness of Kiev to carry out constructive work on the Minsk platform, the press office of the DPR Foreign Ministry reports.
«Instead of embarking on fruitful activities aimed at agreeing on a Roadmap for the implementation of the Set of Measures, Ukraine spends negotiating time on discussing topics that are absolutely not related to the approved agenda,» DPR Plenipotentiary to the Trilateral Contact Group negotiations in Minsk Natalia Nikonorova said.
She also pointed out that, despite the extreme complexity of the Minsk negotiation process, the Republics remain committed to the Package of Measures and other documents of the Minsk Package and intend to do everything possible to bring the negotiation process out of stagnation.
«Since at the moment the negotiations in the Contact Group are actually blocked due to the position of Kiev, we decided to initiate an international scientific and practical conference «On the implementation of the Minsk Agreements on the settlement of the conflict in Donbass». Such an event, which can be held in Minsk for the convenience of all participants, would be a real and objectively necessary opportunity for an open discussion on the practical implementation of the Minsk Agreements, and not only the two parties to the conflict – Kiev and Donbass – but also the mediators represented by the OSCE and the guarantor countries, as well as representatives of the UN member states will be invited to participate in it. We are already receiving signals of interest from experts and members of the public in European countries.
However, this idea, like many other proposals of the Republics, did not find support among the representatives of Ukraine, although no clear and constructive counterarguments were voiced. At the same time, we are grateful to the mediators represented by the Russian Federation, who positively assessed our initiative and expressed their readiness to assist in holding this conference.
We have to note that the situation that has developed on the Minsk platform is causing more and more pessimistic forecasts regarding the prospects for a peaceful settlement in Donbass. Literally any of our proposals aimed at unblocking the negotiations are met with a categorical rebuff from Ukraine. At the same time, Kiev offers nothing but an increased number of attacks on our territory, the development of bills that affect our rights, aggressive rhetoric in the media and outright sabotage of productive work in the peace negotiations.
And although the Ukrainian authorities are very fond of telling on all possible international platforms about their alleged commitment to the Minsk Agreements, their behavior in practice is diametrically at odds with their words and in fact indicates the obvious: Kiev is not going to faithfully implement the peace settlement plan,» the DPR Plenipotentiary said.
