MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/. The bill on the reintegration of the Donbass region passed by Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) in the first reading undermines the Minsk agreements and is out of tune with the tasks of resolving the conflict in southeastern Ukraine, Chairman of Russia’s State Duma (upper house) Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Ties with Compatriots, Leonid Kalashnikov, told TASS on Friday.
"This document does not solve any tasks to resolve the crisis in the southeast [of Ukraine]. It states that an aggressor, namely, Russia, appeared all of a sudden. The Minsk agreements are thus derailed by a single provision," the lawmaker noted.
Kalashnikov added that the authorities in Kiev are consistently undermining the Minsk agreements, including through the education reform and the Ukrainization of the population. "They opted for this approach, apparently, after again getting the go-ahead from their Western bosses," he said.
Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian legislators put an initial stamp of approval on the bill entitled "On the peculiarities of state policy to ensure Ukraine’s state sovereignty over the temporarily occupied territories in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions". A total of 233 lawmakers voted for the decision (with 226 necessary votes).
The document was registered in the parliament by President Pyotr Poroshenko. It describes the districts of the Donbass region uncontrolled by Kiev as "temporarily occupied territories," while the president is given the right to use armed forces in the east of the country. Later on, an amendment was introduced to the bill, which omits reference to the Minsk agreements from the text.