Today’s disruption of the joint inspection is yet another evidence of Kiev’s inability to negotiate, Minister of Foreign Affairs and DPR Plenipotentiary Representative Natalya Nikonorova said.
“The agreements reached yesterday at the meeting of the Contact Group were disrupted by Kiev, and they used totally ridiculous reasoning as an excuse. Thus, Ukrainian representatives demanded a negative test for coronavirus, passport of Ukraine or the Russian Federation, as well as the absence of the abbreviation “DPR” on uniforms and documents.
Such demands are not only absurd, they were put forward just half an hour before the scheduled start of the inspection, while yesterday at the meeting of the Contact Group, when the details of the joint inspection were being discussed, they did not mention anything similar.
No matter how much the Ukrainian side tries to embellish its refusal to conduct the inspection with allegedly justified reasons, the simple truth is that the agreement was disrupted solely through the fault of Kiev. At the same time, we are well aware of the true reason of such destructive behavior — the Ukrainian armed forces in actual fact violated the Additional Measures when it comes to the deployment of fortifications and structures in the Shumy area, so the Ukrainian leadership is trying to conceal this state of affairs in every way to prevent objective monitoring of its positions.
This has been confirmed once again today, when the Chief of the DPR Representative Office to the JCCC was explicitly told that under no circumstances he would be allowed to enter the area where we had previously registered violations.
We recommend that the Ukrainian representatives do not expect to get away with such tricks — Kiev shall be brought to account for sabotaging the peace agreements, including at the level of the Normandy format,” Nikonorova said.
