UA
FR
DEAny new additional external initiatives for a peaceful settlement of the situation in Donbas do not make sense at the moment, and the second Minsk agreements, dated February 2015, have no alternative. Sergei Lavrov, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, said this in his interview for the Croatian newspaper “Vecernji list.”
According to him, the protocol signed by the negotiators became a part of international law because it was approved by UN Security Council Resolution 2202.
“Now there is just a need to fully implement what the parties agreed on more than five years ago during a long diplomatic marathon. We do not see the need for any additional external initiatives,” the Russian Foreign Minister said.
At the same time, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov said that “Normandy Four” leaders could revise the Minsk agreements, “having told the truth: it works here, it can work here, they will never work here, so let’s rewrite it.”
The Minister also noted that 9 December is the end of the year taken by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to try to implement the scenario set out in the Minsk agreements.
“He (President of Ukraine – ed.) said that he gives himself a year to follow the scenario that was written in 2014, bearing in mind the Minsk agreements. Yes, as they were written. He said this on 9 December, as I perceive it, in Paris. So, this year will end on 9 December, and the President will make a decision,” Reznikov said.
According to him, the war in Donbas will not end in 2020, because it will take a long time to withdraw Russian troops from the Donbas occupied territories. At the same time, Ukraine cannot abandon the 2015 agreements absolutely because there are “political and diplomatic agreements between the four countries.”
Bohdan Marusyak
