President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said Monday that he would not allow the country's transition from the unitary system of government to the federal one.
KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th August, 2018) President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said Monday that he would not allow the country's transition from the unitary system of government to the Federal one.
Earlier in August, Kiev's representative in the humanitarian subgroup at the Minsk talks Viktor Medvedchuk said that the autonomous status of Donbas republics could become a compromise between Kiev and the region. He noted that the polls held in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) showed that 43% of the residents of this region supported the independence of the republics, while another 43% were in favor of the status of autonomy within Ukraine.
"Ukraine is a unitary state, we will not allow any federalization in the key elements of functioning of the state," Poroshenko wrote on Twitter.
The Ukrainian president pointed out that in accordance with the decentralization reform "huge rights" had been delegated to local communities, reducing the distance between the individual and the authorities.
DPR and LPR declared independence from Kiev in 2014, with the Ukrainian authorities launching a military campaign against the two republics.
In February 2015, a peace agreement, which was agreed by the Normandy Four countries, namely Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, was signed between Ukraine's conflicting sides in the Belarusian capital of Minsk. Key points of the Minsk agreements include a ceasefire, heavy weapons withdrawal from the line of contact in eastern Ukraine, constitutional reforms, including a decentralization of power in the country, and granting a special status to the Donbas region.
The Ukrainian authorities consider the idea of federalization unacceptable, claiming that it may lead to a split in the country. According to Poroshenko, the decentralization reform carried out by Kiev is a guarantee that no federalization will take place in the country.
