PRESS RELEASE
Minsk Process Jams Up: Independence Forces Blame the Kiev Regime
Aug. 7, 2015 (EIRNS)—Subgroups organized under the Minsk Contact Group met in Minsk on Aug. 3 and 4, to discuss matters related to implementing the Feb. 12 Minsk cease-fire agreement. However, the subgroup on security, arguably the most important, failed to reach agree on a document specifying the withdrawal of tanks and weapons under 100mm caliber from the line of contact. The representatives from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics came out of the meeting accusing the Kiev regime of sabotaging the process.
In short, they charged, the talks failed to come to an agreement because of Kiev’s insistance that the withdrawal of tanks and mortars be done in phases, rather than all at once, a plan that would allow the Kiev regime’s army to continue shelling Donetsk and Gorlovka for up to two more months.
"The key task we had was to agree on simultaneous withdrawal of the weapons of calibre under 100mm from the entire front line," said DPR representative Denis Pushilin, reports Tass. "This decision could be a major step towards a complete ceasefire." Kiev "insisted the weapons should be withdrawn step-by-step," he said.
"And the weapons from the front line’s parts, from where the Ukrainian side continues shelling of Donetsk and Gorlovka, they wanted to withdraw in the very end, naming the time frame of over two months. This is absolutely unacceptable for us."
"Ukraine wasn’t interested in the Minsk process previously either, putting brake on it in every possible way," leader of the DPR Alexander Zakharchenko said, yesterday. "All the talks have entered a phase of stagnation," he went on. "In the meantime, life of people in the Donetsk republic depends on the decisions taken in Minsk in many ways."
The chairmen of the two People’s Councils, Alexey Karyakin (LPR) and Andrey Purgin (DPR), in a joint statement issued yesterday, called for a reconvening of the Normandy Four format.
"We call on the European Union leaders to prevent a full-scale war on our soil and to return Ukraine to the negotiation process to ensure a peaceful resolution of the conflict and to end the extermination of the people of Donbas,"
they said.
"We would like to know how Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Hollande view the vociferous statements of Poroshenko, Groysman and Parubiy that they do not want to and will not honor the Minsk agreements, that Donbas will not receive a special status even though this is envisaged in the Minsk Package of Measures, that there will be no local elections in Donbass, nor will there be an amnesty for combatants on both sides. But these are also the basic conditions of Minsk-1 and Minsk-2,"
Karyakin and Purgin said.
