DONETSK, November 7. /TASS/. The first meeting of the National Council (new parliament) of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) will be held next week, Yevgeny Orlov, the leader of the Free Donbass movement, said Friday.
“The first meeting will roughly be held next week. During the meeting, we will elect the National Council speaker,” Orlov told a TASS correspondent.
Elections of the DPR head and lawmakers took place November 2. The republic’s prime minister, Alexander Zakharchenko, won the election with 75.6% of the vote (765,000 voters). He officially took office as DPR head on November 4.
The “Donetsk Republic” movement led by him won the parliamentary election gaining 662,725 votes. The Free Donbass movement received the support of 306,892 people.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry earlier said it “respects the will expression of the residents of (Ukraine’s) south-east”.
According to the UN, more than 4,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled Ukraine’s south-east as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, conducted since mid-April, to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics.
The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on a ceasefire at talks mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed his plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine.
The ceasefire took effect the same day but has reportedly occasionally been violated.