11:56 17.06.2019

Ukrainian nationalists in new Rada planning to propose breaking off diplomatic relations with Russia, withdrawal from Minsk negotiation

3 min read

 Abandoning the Minsk process, replacing the "Normandy format" of negotiation with a Budapest one, and severing diplomatic relations with Russia will be the first legislative initiatives to be proposed by the joint Ukrainian nationalist forces after the election of a new parliament.

"We will propose bills that will compel our Foreign Ministry to replace the Normandy [negotiation] format with the Budapest format. We believe that the current negotiation, involving France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, called the Normandy format, will not lead to the positive result, i.e. ending this war," Svoboda Party leader Oleh Tiahnybok, who tops the nationalists' single list for multi-mandate constituency, said at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

Under pressure from French and German businesses, Paris and Berlin "very often do not side with Ukraine in this Moscow-Ukrainian confrontation," he said.

"We believe that today Ukraine's main strategic partners are the United States and Britain and it is them who should be at the negotiating table if we want to end this war as soon as possible, and end it on Ukraine's terms. Only these countries can put Russia into certain boundaries.

"And the third initiative is to increase sanctions inside Ukraine," Tiahnybok said. T

The situation where "the war with Russia" has gone for more than five years and Moscow's businesses are prospering in Ukraine is unacceptable, he said.

"We consider it right to break off diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation. We consider it right to fully block this business on blood. Any economic relations with the aggressor state and with the occupied territories today must be discontinued," he said.

National Corps leader Andriy Biletsky, who is number two on the list, said that the nationalists will insist that the Minsk negotiation was illegal and should be abandoned.

"Everything that was signed in Minsk are unconstitutional things leading to the federalization of Ukraine and Kyiv's official recognition of the terrorist organizations, their structures, militants and so on. So, ending the pointless Minsk, which showed yet again, now under [President Volodymyr] Zelensky and with the second coming of Kuchma [Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's second president and representative in the Trilateral Contact Group], that what's behind it is a zero result and the betrayal of national interests," Biletsky said.

On June 10 National Corps, Svoboda, the Right Sector and veterans' and civic organizations decided to participate in early parliamentary elections as a united nationalist bloc with their subsequent consolidation. The nationalists' joint list is topped by Svoboda's Tiahnybok.

AD
AD
Milk
AD
AD
AD
AD