KIEV, June 23. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ruled out the country’s federalization and threatened the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk Republics that the Kiev authorities would prosecute them under Ukrainian legislation.
"No federalization will be permitted," he said at a meeting of the National Reform Council. "The initiators of creating any republics will be brought to justice. Should anyone try, the response will be instantaneous. No one should have the temptation to create any republics in Donetsk, Luhansk or Bessarabia," he argued.
"The issues of national defence, security, public order and external relations and the issues that keep the vertical chain of command integral will be regarded as an exclusive competence of state power," he said.
Minsk agreements
The Belarusian capital Minsk on February 11-12 played host to a summit meeting of the so-called "Normandy Quartet". At about the same time the Contact Group for Ukraine met in session with representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics taking part. On February 12 a package of measures was adopted for implementing the Minsk Accords. The Contact Group’s participants and also heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics put their signatures to the document.
The document envisaged full ceasefire starting from 00:00 hours of February 15, the pullback of all heavy armaments from the engagement line, and the monitoring of this process by the OSCE. Besides, the document described measures for achieving a political settlement in Ukraine, including the enforcement of the previously introduced special status of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics. Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Petro Poroshenko adopted a declaration in support of the political settlement in Ukraine.
On February 24, 2015 the foreign ministers of the Normandy Quartet (Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine) met in Paris to discuss progress in settling the crisis in Ukraine. They called for the unhampered access of humanitarian assistance to all of Ukraine’s regions without an exception and also instructed the political directors (at the deputy foreign minister level) to conduct permanent monitoring and to brief the parties concerned on different phases of implementing the Minsk package of February 12, 2015.