Lavrov: Rada decisions concerning Donbas violate Minsk agreements
The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada's decisions regarding legislation concerning the special status for some districts in Donbas grossly violate the Minsk agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"The Verkhovna Rada has made decisions at President [Petro] Poroshenko's proposal that in fact rewrite the agreements, or, to put it bluntly, grossly violate them, as they condition the introduction of the law on [Donbas'] special status by the need to liberate these territories, which they have called occupied," Lavrov said at a press conference following negotiations with the foreign minister of Gabon on Wednesday.
In addition, the legislation passed by the Rada envisions "the replacement of virtually all people elected by the population of these territories by someone else," Lavrov said.
"As follows from the Rada's resolution, the law on special status will take effect only when these territories are governed by someone acceptable to Kyiv," he said.
"This is literally an attempt to turn everything that was agreed upon on its head," he said.
Lavrov said also he had been "particularly confused" by the fact that the Rada's Tuesday resolutions had been initiated by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who had earlier supported the Minsk peace agreements.
"I regret to comment on this situation, because it seemed to me that steps that need to be taken were unambiguously determined in Minsk on February 12," he said.
The package of measures to implement the Minsk agreements was signed by all members of the contact group, including a Kyiv envoy, he said.
"It says literally that, immediately after the withdrawal of heavy weapons, dialogue must be started on modalities of holding local municipal elections in the relevant districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. That is, there should be a dialogue on how these elections should be held," Lavrov said, pointing out that, while such elections must be held based on Ukrainian law, their modality should be agreed upon with Donetsk and Luhansk.
"Nobody has even tried to do this," he said.
