KIEV, January 19. /TASS/. Kiev is ready to work with Moscow on fulfilling the agreements on resolving the Ukrainian crisis reached in the Belarusian capital Minsk, the Ukrainian foreign minister said on Monday.
“We are ready to work with Russia on ensuring the ceasefire and the full implementation of all the provisions of the Minsk agreements,” Pavlo Klimkin wrote in his Twitter microblog.
Kiev has earlier proposed Moscow signing a schedule of implementation of Minsk agreements as of November 13 and providing for the ceasefire in the south-east of Ukraine starting January 19.
“The beginning of the steadfast implementation of this document will create the necessary preconditions for consultations of the Contact Group, a meeting between the foreign ministers of Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia and in perspective — for the summit of the leaders of these countries in Astana,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement earlier on Monday.
The statement also said that Ukraine was ready to take part in consultations of the Contact Group at any time and that Kiev was implementing all earlier reached Minsk agreements, including on ceasefire.
The Contact Group talks in Minsk on January 16 were frustrated as Kiev sent no representative to the meeting. Representatives of both the Donetsk and Luhansk republics arrived in Minsk to attend the negotiations.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser Yury Biryukov stated on Sunday that the Ukrainian military had been ordered to open heavy fire at the positions of militias in the zone of the military operation in south-eastern Ukraine.
Self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) confirmed later that the city of Donetsk had been shelled by Ukrainian troops from all types of weapons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the Ukrainian military and militias on Sunday to immediately stop shelling each other’s positions and to pull out heavy weapons from the both sides of the conflict line.
At the September 5 meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk, attended by the representatives of Kiev, Ukraine’s south-east, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Russia, the sides agreed on a plan for peaceful settlement and a ceasefire.
Numerous violations of the ceasefire, which took effect the same day, have been reported since.
Two weeks later, a memorandum was adopted in Minsk which outlined the parameters for the implementation of commitments on the ceasefire in Ukraine laid down in the Minsk Protocol of September 5.