DONETSK, September 16. /ITAR-TASS/. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) will consider and might even adopt some of the provisions of the recently passed Ukrainian law on the special status of Donbass, which comprises DPR and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), as they may provide conditions for peaceful coexistence of the region with the rest of the country, DPR’s First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Purgin said on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law proposed by President Petro Poroshenko on the special status of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the south-east of Ukraine, commonly referred to as Donbass.
“We will be studying this law,” Purgin said. “This is a framework law. We currently proceed from the stance that no political agreements with Ukraine are planned. However, while studying the law we may take a notice of some of its provisions, which we might adopt and they would help us coexist with Ukraine, for instance, in social and cultural and economic spheres."
"Step in a right direction"
The Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) considers the adoption by the Ukrainian parliament of a law on a special status in Donbass as a positive development of the Minsk peace process.
“The adoption of the law is a step in a right direction,” the chairman of the Supreme Council of LPR, Alexei Karyakin, told ITAR-TASS. “This is in line with the Minsk agreements.”
Karyakin said it was still early to speak on the law in detail as it must be first translated into the Russian language.
“After this is done, we will analyze it and then answer whether we agree to it or not,” he added.
Koryakin also said the right stipulated by the law to establish independent police forces could grant independence supporters in the eastern Ukrainian regions a legitimate international status and then “no one would be able to call militia as ‘terrorists.’”
With the necessary 226 votes to pass the law, 277 out of a total of 450 lawmakers in Ukraine’s Verkovna Rada voted in favor of the on the special status of Donbass.
A special self-rule status for the independence-seeking Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the free use of the Russian language there was proposed on Monday by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
The draft law that he submitted with the parliament also called for local elections in the region on December 7, 2014.
The Ukrainska Pravda daily earlier reported that law guaranteed the use of the Russian or any other language “in public and private life, the study and support of the Russian or any other language, its free development and equal status.”
According to the law, the special status would be granted for a limited period of three years, during which time Kiev hopes to carry out its decentralization plans and adopt appropriate amendments to the constitution.
Poroshenko said a special status for certain parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions was a key element of his peace plan.
“De facto they are elements of decentralization with full and unconditional respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of our state,” Poroshenko said, adding that the state would retain all principal attributes of power such as foreign policy and law.