Kuchma warns against UN peacekeepers' deployment only on Donbas contact line

16:05, 23.02.2018 1 min read

The Donbas contact line will become a new Ukrainian border should the UN peacekeeping mission be deployed along it, the second Ukrainian President and representative to the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, said in Kyiv on Friday.

"The Trilateral Contact Group has a unanimous opinion, which coincides with the president's one, that the peacekeepers should be stationed throughout the territory, primarily on the Ukrainian-Russian border. The proposals that the Blue Helmets first be deployed on the contact line to protect the OSCE mission imply the drawing of a new border for Ukraine," Kuchma said at the 4th Baltic and Black Sea forum on the joint security of the region as a consensual strategy for a greater Europe.

European politicians "have forgotten history lessons," so Ukraine should rely on the U.S. assistance, Kuchma said. "Peace in Ukraine 90% depends on the United States," he said.