Minsk talks deadlocked over Kiev’s position, says Donetsk

Talks in Minsk on settling the armed civil conflict in eastern Ukraine have come to a standstill because of a position taken by the Kiev government, Alexander Zakharchenko, the Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic said on Thursday during a televised question-time show with the regional audiences.

“Ukraine wasn’t interested in the Minsk process previously either, putting brake on it in every possible way,” the Donetsk News Agency quoted him.

It is exactly this line of conduct taken by Kiev that has practically disrupted the peace process by now.
“All the talks have entered a phase of stagnation,” Zakharchenko said. “In the meantime, life of people in the Donetsk republic depends on the decisions taken in Minsk in many ways.”

The five-partite Contact Group for settling the conflict in eastern Ukraine and its specialized subgroups met in session on Monday, August 3. The session lasted until midnight but the parties to the talks failed to do one of the most much-awaited things, namely, to initial the text of an agreement on a gradual pullback of tanks, armored cars and weapons with the caliber of up to 100 mm from the line of contact.

In the light of it, the subgroup for security, which monitors the issue, continued discussions throughout the next day but to no avail.

Plenipotentiary representatives of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, Denis Pushillin and Vladislav Deinego said upon the end of the talks that Kiev had sabotaged the initialing of the document on the pullback of weaponry.