MINSK, October 2. /TASS/. Leonid Kuchma, the second president of independent Ukraine and one of the signatories of the Minsk accords on settling the armed civil conflict in the east of the country, rounded up his mission to the Group officially on Tuesday.
He said a few days ago that he was going to quit the position. On Tuesday, his press secretary said after a regular meeting of the Group this was the last session where Kuchma took part.
"At the end of today’s meeting in Minsk, Leonid Kuchma thanked his colleagues in the Trilateral Contact Group for the work they had done together," she tweeted in Facebook. "He drew the bottom line under his performance as Ukraine’s representative in the Trilateral Contact Group this way."
"Leonid Kuchma gave special thanks to Belarus for facilitation to the negotiations," the press secretary said. The special envoy of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Martin Sajdik thanked Kuchma on behalf of the Group for his contribution to the Minsk process.
Russia’s plenipotentiary representative to the Group, Boris Gryzlov, told reporters that Kuchma had taken a decision to quit owing to his advanced age.
"We respect the decision to finish activities in the Contact Group that Leonid Danilovich [the second word being Kuchma’s patronymic - TASS] has taken," he said.
"We respect Leonid Danilovich’s decision to round up his work in the Group, as he has turned 80 years old," Gryzlov said. "I’ve known him for a long time as a seasoned politician whose goal is to reach dialogue and I know the values of dialogue will prevail in Ukrainian politics eventually and will help resolve the current conflict in Donbass."
Kuchma made public his firm decision to leave the Contact Group last Friday. As he explained for it, he said he had taken it a long time ago.
"I’ve decided finally for myself I have to stop somewhere," he said, adding that the Minsk meetings were difficult enough for him, from the physical standpoint in the first place.
"When I come back home, it takes me a couple of days to recover from all these meetings because all the discussions there are very difficult, especially when you know there are no results," Kuchma said.
He admitted along with it he would refrain from a full analysis of the considerations prompting him to resign from the post of the plenipotentiary representative. Also, he declined to say anything about his possible successor, saying however the person was Ruslan Demchenko, an advisor to President Poroshenko.
Kuchma was one of the founders of the Contact Group as a format for negotiations on settling the conflict in Donbass. He took part in the very first semi-official meeting on June 23, 2014, in Donetsk.
The Minsk format took final shape only by autumn of that year. The parties to the consultations signed the first package of documents on settlement in Donbass in Minsk on September 5. Kuchma signed it on behalf of the Ukrainian authorities.