The assassination of Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, will not significantly affect the Donbas peace process, a Ukrainian lawmaker said Friday.
KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st August, 2018) The assassination of Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, will not significantly affect the Donbas peace process, a Ukrainian lawmaker said Friday.
Zakharchenko was killed in a bomb blast in a cafe in downtown Donetsk earlier in the day. The self-proclaimed republic's prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into the murder.
"I believe that [Zakharchenko's murder] would not change much because Zakharchenko was another puppet in the Kremlin's hands and this does not basically change anything," Oleksiy Honcharenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian parliament's largest faction, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Solidarity, told the Pryamyi tv channel.
The murder of Zakharchenko demonstrated that Donetsk and Luhansk "turn to Somalia in the center of Europe where infighting over money and power is ongoing."
Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier on Friday that the Ukrainian authorities might be behind the assassination of Zakharchenko. The diplomat called on the international community to demand an unbiased investigation into the assassination.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), in its turn, said it was not involved in the murder.
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said on Friday that additional efforts would be required to save the Minsk peace agreements, aimed at the settlement of the situation in Donbas, after the killing of Zakharchenko.
In 2014, the Ukrainian army started an offensive against Donbas militias who refused to recognize the newly-formed government. The conflict between the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the DPR, on one side, and the Kiev forces, on the other, has claimed over 10,000 lives according to UN figures and is still ongoing.
Efforts to stabilize the situation in eastern Ukraine have been made by the Normandy Four group comprising Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany.
In particular, the Normandy Four brokered the Minsk peace accords, which were signed by the sides to the conflict in a bid to end hostilities in the area. However, the warring parties have failed to observe the ceasefire, so the unrest in Donbas continues.
