Rada to floor draft law on ensuring sovereignty over Donbas on Jan 16 - Parubiy
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Speaker Andriy Parubiy has said he hopes deputies will begin the first plenary session of 2018 by adopting the law on ensuring sovereignty over occupied Donbas.
"Let me remind you that our session will continue into January. I am certain the law naming Russia as an occupation force is an important law… I hope and I am convinced that during the next week of plenary Rada sessions – that would be, if I am not mistaken, the week of January 16 – that we will floor the law on de-occupation, on naming Russia as the aggressor state," Parubiy said during a plenary Rada session on Wednesday.
Ukraine's First Deputy Parliament Speaker and representative of the Minsk Trilateral Contract Group's humanitarian subgroup Iryna Gerashchenko earlier said the process of exchanging prisoners with Russian occupation forces in Luhansk and Donetsk regions could be disrupted.
"There is a very big chance the prisoner exchange could be disrupted. We thought it would happen much more quickly, before the New Year and Christmas… But the other side could blame Ukraine for all the problems. Russia's withdrawal from the Russia's withdrawal from the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) makes it obvious that Russia is pulling out their military officers in order to complicate the situation, in order to exacerbate the situation between Kyiv and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics," Gerashchenko said.