The negotiator for the eastern Ukrainian self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said that Negotiations on Ukrainian reconciliation need to be renewed on the so-called Normandy format because Kiev is attempting to bring war back into the country’s eastern regions.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Negotiations on Ukrainian reconciliation need to be renewed on the so-called Normandy format because Kiev is attempting to bring war back into the country’s eastern regions, the negotiator for the eastern Ukrainian self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said Wednesday.
On Monday, the sides to the conflict in Donbas
were due to sign an agreement to pull back weapons with a
caliber of less than 100mm. However, a source in the talks
on the weaponry withdrawal said that Kiev refused to remove its
weaponry from four specific areas, while the militias demanded that the
entire contact line be cleared of such weapons.
"Kiev is doing everything it can already for the
fourth time and at the last minute [of negotiations] not to withdraw
its hardware armed with 100mm [from the contact line]. Kiev has proposed
adding an exception to withdrawing hardware from the entire line
of contact. [Kiev] tried to make amendments that would allow it
another 60 days to withdraw its hardware and continue shelling,"
Denis Pushilin said on Russia’s Rossiya-24 television channel.
He said that these type of tactics are purely
"an attempt to return the situation to war."
An agreement urging the sides to the Ukraine
conflict to pull back weapons with a caliber of less
than 100-mm was supported in July by the leaders of Russia,
France, Germany and Ukraine, the so-called Normandy Quartet.
It also envisaged
the creation of a nearly 19-mile demilitarized zone along the contact
line that separates Kiev-led forces and local militia in eastern Ukraine.
On July 28, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said
the agreement between the warring sides would be signed by August 3
and implemented within 10 days.
The immediate withdrawal of heavy artillery
from the contact line and a ceasefire were stipulated in the Minsk
peace deal signed by the Normandy Quarter in February, however, both
sides have since repeatedly accused each other of violating the agreement.
Source: Sputnik News
05-08-2015
