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Envoy says Ukraine Contact Group did not discuss date of next meeting

Participants in the Saturday meeting of the Contact Group for settling the crisis in eastern Ukraine have taken off-time for consultations on the dates of ceasefire, Deinego said

LUGANSK, January 31. /TASS/. Participants in the Saturday meeting of the Contact Group for settling the crisis in eastern Ukraine did not discuss the date of the next meeting, the plenipotentiary representative of the self-proclaimed unrecognized Lugansk People’s Republic to the Minsk negotiations, Vladislav Deinego, told TASS after the talks.

"The date of the next meeting was not discussed," he said. "We laid out our position and the Ukrainian side laid out its own position."

Participants in the Saturday meeting of the Contact Group for settling the crisis in eastern Ukraine have taken off-time for consultations on the dates of ceasefire, Deinego said.

He said the sides had failed to ratify the final text of an agreement on stabilization something that the Lugnask and Donetsk People's republics had insisted on earlier.

"A presumable date for the document stipulating the settlement in the war-torn Donbass, which should be signed by leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics /DPR and LPR/ was not on the table of the Minsk talks on Saturday," Deinego said adding that the issue had not been discussed along with other issues due to "differences in attitudes."

"It was put off until accord on the main issue - a ceasefire - is reached but /Ukrainian President/ Poroshenko’s decree is needed here as no-one can believe a ceasefire will materialise until a decree of this kind is officially published and released," the Lugansk News Centre quotes Deinego as saying.

Earlier in the day, Denis Pushilin, the plenipotentiary representative at the talks of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic at the Minsk negotiations, said after the end of the Saturday round of talks that the date of the next meeting of the Contact Group is now contingent on Kiev’s position,

"I can only say we’ve displayed a stance that’s up to the point," Pushilin said. "We also presented all the arguments that would help prevent more shelling and what’s needed now for the Prime Ministers of the two republics (Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky) to come to Minsk is practical ceasefire."

"What’s needed is Poroshenko’s relevant order to all the units of the Armed Forces and the ‘national guard’," he said.