DONETSK (RIA): The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic is ready to work on the draft roadmap proposed by Kiev, if all contradictions to the Minsk agreements are eliminated. This was stated by the head of the DPR Foreign Ministry and her plenipotentiary to the Trilateral Contact Group on the settlement in Donbass Natalia Nikonorova
“There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ roadmap drafts for us,” says a statement released by the press service of the self-proclaimed republic’s Foreign Ministry.
As Nikonorova pointed out, according to Donetsk, the project of the Ukrainian delegation consists of 78 percent of inconsistencies with the Minsk agreements.
The plenipotentiary recalled that the DPR and LPR have been waiting for a response from Kiev to their proposed roadmap for more than nine months.
The Minsk agreements on resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine provide for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the contact line, as well as a constitutional reform, the key elements of which should be decentralization and the adoption of a law on the special status of certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the Ukrainian authorities are doing everything possible to evade their own obligations to fulfill the agreements. The diplomat noted that the Package of Measures contains specific agreements between Kiev , Donetsk and Lugansk on a peaceful settlement of the conflict.
The Ukrainian authorities are constantly putting forward ideas about changing the format of negotiations or their platform. Thus, the press secretary of the delegation in the TCG, Aleksey Arestovich, stated that Ukraine could refuse to hold meetings in Minsk, since the republic “has ceased to be a neutral state.” According to him, Kiev “will look for some kind of European capital, not a NATO member .”
As emphasized in the State Duma, Kiev’s proposals to change the place of the TCG meeting indicate a desire to disrupt or lead the negotiation process to a dead end. The Russian Foreign Ministry called this idea “hypothetical stupidity.”
