Ukrainian presidential candidate and Batkivschyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko has categorically objected to the establishment of an autonomous region in Donbas as a way of settling the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

"There have been calls for establishing an autonomous region in Donbas: this is absolutely inadmissible. This is our territory, this is our land and, same as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, this is Ukraine," Tymoshenko said on the air of 1+1 TV channel.

The proposal has been made by Viktor Medvedchuk, the Chairman of the Political Council of the Opposition Platform - For Life party.

The war "waged on Ukraine by the Russian Federation as an aggressor country" must not be transformed into "a civil war in which Ukrainians are allegedly fighting each other," Tymoshenko said.

The law on the special status of Donetsk and Luhansk regions adopted by the Verkhovna Rada did not directly describe Donbas as autonomy "but actually endorsed its autonomous status," she said.

Once again, Tymoshenko called for holding the Donbas settlement talks in the Budapest format involving signatories of the Budapest Memorandum.

On February 5, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office granted the request of People's Front deputy Andriy Teteruk and entered information about Medvedchuk's crimes, encroachment of Ukraine's territorial integrity and treason, in the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations.

The prosecutor general's press secretary, Larysa Sarhan, said that Medvedchuk made a loud statement at the party's congress in Kyiv on January 29, 2019. He called for establishing "the autonomous region of Donbas," which would have its own parliament and government, and for legalizing this status in the Ukrainian Constitution. He also said it was possible to agree on the status of Donbas in the quadripartite format involving Kyiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Moscow.