Kiev's new action plan for Donbas that calls for the demilitarization of the region seeks to violently seize the territories instead of finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Natalia Nikonorova, the foreign minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said on Monday
DONETSK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2020) Kiev's new action plan for Donbas that calls for the demilitarization of the region seeks to violently seize the territories instead of finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Natalia Nikonorova, the foreign minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said on Monday.
Earlier in November, Oleksiy Arestovych, the information policy adviser to the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group, said that the delegation had developed a "plan of joint steps" including the "withdrawal of illegal groups and mercenaries" from the breakaway eastern region in early 2021 which would allow for local elections to be held there on March 31.
"From this document we can conclude that it is not aimed at settling the conflict peacefully. On the contrary, it aims to gradually seize our territories by force. We are offered to demilitarize, give up and sign a surrender. Some people have to run away; others have to settle in camps ... A lot of things are offered, but not the resolution of the conflict," Nikonorova said.
The minister added that the plan turned out to be a step away from a peaceful settlement, and it completely contradicts the Minsk agreements.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 when the country's military launched an offensive against Donbas after Donetsk and Luhansk regions proclaimed independence from Kiev. The two provinces said they were acting in response to what they considered to be a coup in the Ukrainian capital that toppled the old government in February of that year.
In February 2015, leaders of the so-called Normandy Four Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany held talks in Minsk that resulted in adopting agreements aimed at halting the war in Donbas and a long-term political settlement of the conflict. During a Normandy Format summit in late 2019, all sides agreed that the Minsk agreements remain the basis for the resolution of the crisis.
