Ukrainian citizens will be able to vote in a referendum on Donbas only in Kiev-controlled territories, Speaker of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Monday
KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th December, 2021) Ukrainian citizens will be able to vote in a referendum on Donbas only in Kiev-controlled territories, Speaker of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Monday.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he is not excluding the possibility of a referendum on Donbas, which would determine the status of the breakaway region.
"The competent structural units to hold an all-Ukrainian referendum can be created only on the territory that is under the control of the state of Ukraine," Stefanchuk said to the parliament's broadcaster Rada.
He added that voters residing in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's republics will not be excluded from the decision-making process and will be able to participate by coming to "Ukrainian-controlled territory and voting for a particular decision."
"I suppose that for every citizen who may have such an expression of will, all conditions will be created as it was done during the elections, the same mechanism," Stefanchuk said.
Responding to the question of whether a referendum on Donbas contradicts Ukrainian legislation, which prohibits putting territorial integrity issues to an all-Ukrainian vote, Stefanchuk argued that it will depend on the formulation of the voting question.
The separatist movement in eastern Ukraine emerged in the aftermath of 2014 Ukrainian revolution claiming independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions from Ukrainian authority. Early clashes escalated into a protracted military conflict that claimed thousands of lives, including 3,095 civilians, and displaced more than 2 million Ukrainians. A ceasefire was reached in 2020, but the fighting has occasionally broken out with negotiations of parties to the conflict being sidelined.
