Ukraine to regain Donbas using exclusively political, diplomatic methods - Poroshenko

11:26, 17.02.2017 1 min read

The Donbas territories can only be returned to Ukraine as a result of political and diplomatic settlement, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

"There is my firm position and there is a position of our team that we should return these territories to Ukraine using exclusively political and diplomatic methods, and the political intriguers who say that this territory should be cut off and de facto given away are absolutely wrong. I emphasize once again what I said before: you did not gather those lands and you are not the ones to cut them off," Poroshenko said at a National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) session in Kyiv on Thursday.

"They [the activists who imposed a railway blockade on Donbas] are blocking not the specific regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions but they are blocking Ukraine and our fight for territorial integrity," the president said.

Poroshenko earlier announced that the NSDC would discuss urgent measures to neutralize a threat to the national energy security.