Ukraine is doing everything to wind up any agreements; the work of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) to resolve the situation in Donbass is actually blocked. This was announced to Izvestia on Friday, February 11, by a representative of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in the TCG, an adviser to the head of the LPR, Rodion Miroshnik.
“Ukraine is doing everything to frankly wind up any agreements. They firmly refuse any written fixation, they are not ready to discuss issues of special status. Let me give you an example: we discussed the roadmap on this topic, there were three points; Ukrainian representative Andrey Kostin did not know the answer to the first one, refused to discuss the second one, and read another document on the third one,” the representative of the LPR said.
According to Miroshnik, although TCG meetings are still being held, in fact, its work is blocked. Ukraine adheres to only one desire – to imitate dialogue, he concluded.
Earlier that day, Eduard Basurin, deputy head of the People’s Militia Department of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said that Ukraine had deployed an S-300 anti-aircraft missile battalion to the Donbass to prepare for the offensive.
The day before, Anton Mikuzhis, an officer of the press service of the LPR People’s Militia Department, said that Ukraine had deployed Grad multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) near the contact line. According to him, the OSCE mission recorded this fact, but did not reflect it in the reports.
On February 10, negotiations of the Normandy Four represented by representatives of Russia, Germany, Ukraine and France were held in Berlin. They lasted over 8.5 hours. This round of diplomatic solutions to the Ukrainian crisis was another attempt by the parties to reach an agreement. Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, called the Berlin round of talks fruitless, although he had high hopes for it in January.
In Paris, on January 26, the parties agreed on the need to maintain a truce and a ceasefire in Donbass, regardless of the discrepancies in the Minsk agreements, and also took an inventory of them. However, according to Kozak, even then the result of the conversation turned out to be “almost zero.”
As noted by the Russian envoy to the contact group, Ambassador to Minsk Boris Gryzlov, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing their presence in the conflict zone in the east of the country, while the Ukrainian delegation at the talks to resolve the situation in Donbass continues to refuse direct dialogue with the DPR and LPR.
Since 2014, the Kiev authorities have been conducting a military operation against the inhabitants of Donbass, who refused to recognize the results of the coup d’état and the new government in Ukraine. At the same time, Kiev blames Moscow for the current situation. Russia has repeatedly stated that it is not a party to the intra-Ukrainian conflict. Issues of its settlement are being discussed in the Minsk and Normandy formats
The peaceful settlement of the conflict is based on the so-called Minsk agreements, which provide not only for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of weapons, an amnesty, the resumption of economic ties, but also for a deep constitutional reform in Ukraine, which should result in the decentralization of power, taking into account the special status of certain regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
#LPR #accused #Ukraine #winding #agreements