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Developments in eastern Ukraine

Ukraine’s Opposition Bloc ready to take part in local elections in Donbas

According to a party representative of the party, there's enough time fopr a constitutional reform before the elections

© Alexey Slavny/TASS

KIEV, March 30. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Opposition Bloc party said on Sunday it was ready to take part in local elections in Donbas due to be held under the Minsk agreements.

"The Opposition Bloc is ready to take part in such elections. We are categorically against postponing such elections because strict adherence to the constitution is one the major obligations of the authorities," Sergey Levochkin, a party representative, tols the Inter television channel.

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He said that there could only one mechanism of the elections. "It is the Ukrainian law and Ukraine’s Central Election Commission which will be tasked to organize these elections and register their results. These elections must be free and democratic. All parties to the conflict must guarantee freedom and democratic expression of will for Ukrainian citizens, including those who live in Donetsk and Luhansk," he said.

Levochkin said elections in Donbas should be held in compliance with Ukraine’s new laws. "I mean not only a new election law, but also the constitution. I think the time we have before the local elections is enough to conduct a constitutional reform in Ukraine, including a referendum," he noted.

Marathon talks between the Normandy Four leaders - Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko - in Minsk on February 12 yielded a package of agreements, which in particular envisaged ceasefire between the Ukrainian conflicting sides starting from midnight on February 15.

Concurrently, the Belarusian capital hosted a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine involving Ukraine’s ex-president Leonid Kuchma, Kiev’s special representative for humanitarian issues Viktor Medvedchuk, the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics /DPR and LPR/ Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, and Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov and OSCE’s envoy Heidi Tagliavini, both acting as mediators.

As a result, a package of measures was adopted to implement the Minsk agreements. A separate provision of these agreements envisages local elections in Donbass district controlled by DPR and LPR militias.

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Eastern Ukraine

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FACTBOX: Collective Security Treaty Organization

The Collective Security Treaty came into force on April 20, 1994 to herald the emergence what would eventually become the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The six member-countries are Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan

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Stoltenberg said NATO believes Ukraine has the right to strike "legitimate military targets" inside Russia

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