Special representative of the U.S. State Department for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker has said that the international community does not want the situation in Donbas to turn into a longstanding conflict like Cyprus.

"Look, I think it’s a binary choice for Russia. Would it like to create another frozen conflict, occupied territory, like Abkhazia or South Ossetia or Transnistria, which as I said carries with it very high costs, but it’s doable. If they want to, they will, but it's a very high-cost enterprise and sad too, because you hate to see this conflict between Russia and Ukraine continue, you hate to see Russian soldiers being killed. It’s terrible. So hopefully we can avoid that," Volker said, answering a question at a briefing in the U.S. State Department, the Voice of America reported.

An alternative to this scenario the U.S. special envoy called Russia's withdrawing of its forces from certain regions of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and deploying the UN peacekeeping contingent.

"And the alternative is for Russia to withdraw and facilitate a deployment of a UN peacekeeping force which creates peace for everybody and allows Minsk implementation to go forward. That would be the other scenario," Volker said.

At the same time, he rejected the possibility of transforming the situation in Donbas into a prolonged conflict. "I don’t see a scenario where this becomes indefinite, certainly not from an international community position. I don’t think anyone wants a Cyprus solution. I don’t know how many years we’ve been peacekeeping in Cyprus now, and I don’t think Ukraine wants that. They obviously want to restore the territory to Ukrainian sovereignty, and as a result, they have a high incentive to get on with implementing the Minsk agreements," he said.

Volker stressed that the Russian side during the negotiations requires precisely the implementation of the political part of the Minsk agreements.

"But seeing political steps from the Ukrainian side is important to them [to Russia]. So for example, the fact that Ukraine renewed the law on special status for eastern Ukraine on October 6, I believe it was, that was an important step because that was a political step from the Ukrainian side to show that they are committed to that special status when it can be implemented. So I think it’s – those things are what have been important to Russia. It’ll be interesting at the next meeting to see if there are any other things that come up specifically, but until now, that’s about what it’s been, and then we’ll have our next meeting in November," Volker said.

He also recalled that on the issue of the introduction of peacekeepers, it was the U.S. that proposed Ukraine not to put forward counter-proposals to the Russian initiative.

"So Ukraine – it's a couple of years ago – brought up the idea of a UN peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine. At that time, Russia was not ready to explore that. When Russia then presented its ideas for a protection force in September, Ukraine was ready to come forward with its own proposal. But since we've had some developments, discussions, getting the United States more engaged in this overall, discussions with the Russians directly about this, the Russians took the initiative to suggest something," the U.S, special envoy said.

According to him, the U.S. offered Ukraine not to put forward competitive decisions, but to discuss a principled position on what effective peacekeeping forces should do, "see if we can actually reach some agreement, rather than getting into competing drafting exercises." And now there is a discussion of the principles and elements necessary for the future resolution of the UN Security Council.