MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. Kiev’s decision on Donbas special status grossly violates and rewrites the Minsk agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference on Wednesday.
"On [Ukraine’s] President Petro Poroshenko’s proposal, the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] made a decision - which was particularly confusing as Ukraine’s president supported the Minsk package from February 12 - that, in fact, rewrites the agreements and, putting it simply, grossly violates them," Lavrov said.
According to the minister, Moscow calls on Germany and France to make a joint demarche to Kiev for violating the Minsk agreements.
"No one forced the Ukrainian side to officially recognize the results of the elections, but the least the Ukrainian authorities should do is to respect these processes and fulfill the agreements," the foreign minister said.
"There were no additional prerequisites for adopting this law [on Donbas special status]," Lavrov noted. "They only had to define settlements, concrete areas," he said. "I don’t know how the political process [in Ukraine] will go now," Lavrov added.
Yesterday, I addressed the heads of foreign ministries of France and Germany with special requests, drew their attention to Kiev’s flagrant violation of first steps of the political part of the Minsk package and called on them [France and Germany] to make a joint three-party demarche to our Ukrainian colleagues in order to prompt them to fulfill what they have signed themselves and what was supported by the leaders of Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia," Lavrov said.
In reply to a question from TASS following talks with his Gabonian counterpart Emmanuel Issozee Ngonde Lavrov said Kiev has not even tried to start a dialogue with Donetsk and Luhansk over the modality of elections there.
"Immediately after the pullback of heavy weapons a dialogue was to begin over the modalities of holding elections in the corresponding districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions," Lavrov said. In other words, under the Minsk Accords the modality of elections was to be coordinated with Donetsk and Luhansk. Nobody has ever even tried to do this."