Donbas Elections Not Contrary To Minsk Accords, Next Step Toward Sovereignty -LPR Official

Donbas Elections Not Contrary to Minsk Accords, Next Step Toward Sovereignty -LPR Official

The upcoming elections of leaders and lawmakers of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR), located in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, do not contradict the Minsk peace accords, being the next step toward their sovereignty, Olga Kobtseva, LPR representative in the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine's humanitarian subgroup, said on Saturday.

LUHANSK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th November, 2018) The upcoming elections of leaders and lawmakers of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR), located in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, do not contradict the Minsk peace accords, being the next step toward their sovereignty, Olga Kobtseva, LPR representative in the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine's humanitarian subgroup, said on Saturday.

While the elections in the DPR and the LPR are scheduled for Sunday, Kiev has already announced that it did not recognize the elections. The United States and the European Union do not regard the elections as legitimate either, while the Kremlin believes that the elections do not contradict the Minsk peace agreements.

"The elections that will be held in the republic tomorrow by no means contradict the Minsk negotiations process. LPR citizens have made their choice in 2014 already, declaring their will [to secede from Ukraine] at a people's referendum. The elections that we had in 2014, and the elections that will be held this year are just a next step toward the establishment of our state," Kobtseva said in her address to the foreign election observers, delivered at the "For international acknowledgment of Donbas!" round table.

Kobtseva stressed that the Ukrainian authorities had excluded Ukrainians living in Donbas from the country's legal terrain.

"Since the beginning of the military operation, the Ukrainian authorities have not made any effort toward ceasefire along the demarcation line, but they have even created the so-called gray, buffer zone ... Such a disgraceful thing as the demarcation line has appeared, and this line has divided the citizens of the Luhansk and the Donetsk regions into two categories, with some of them being called Ukrainian citizens, and others qualified as separatists," Kobtseva went on to say.

She added that four people, including a female minor, have died in the buffer zone in October alone.

The conflict in Donbas started in 2014, when Ukrainian authorities launched a military operation against the DPR and LPR that refused to recognize the new government in Kiev, which came to power after what they considered to be a coup. In 2015, a ceasefire agreement brokered by the leaders of the Normandy Four group (France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine) was reached in Minsk, but the situation has remained tense, with both parties accusing each other of violating the truce.