MOSCOW, July 27. /TASS/. The Ukrainian Constitutional Court session that on Monday started the consideration of amendments to the country’s Constitution concerning the issue of power decentralization is a mere formality, director of Russia’s Center for Current Politics Alexey Chesnakov told TASS.
"Today's meeting of the Ukrainian Constitutional Court is a mere formality. The constitutional amendments considered by the court do not correspond to the Minsk agreements. Neither in the content - because they do not take into account the special status of the Donbass region, nor in the procedure - as they have not been discussed with representatives of [the self-proclaimed] Donetsk and Lugansk [people’s republics - DPR and LPR]," he said.
According to Chesnakov, "No matter which decision the court takes, Kiev will have to sit down at the negotiating table with the self-proclaimed republics and then adopt the amendments coordinated with them."
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"Only this will guarantee the success of the peaceful settlement process," he said.
Constitutional reform in Ukraine is one of the main requirements of the Package of Measures for the settlement of the situation in the Donbas, which was approved by the leaders of the ‘Normandy Four’ and was signed in the Belarusian capital Minsk on February 12. The Contact Group comprising senior representatives from Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on February 12, 2015, signed a 13-point Package of Measures to fulfil the September 2014 Minsk agreements.
According to this document, Ukraine by the end of 2015 should adopt a new Constitution, which, in particular, envisages as a key element the power decentralization (with taking into account the distinctive features of separate districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, agreed with the regions’ representatives); permanent legislation on the special status of separate districts of DPR and LPR; amnesty; the right to self-determination; local authorities’ participation in the appointment of the prosecutors and judges; the possibility of concluding agreements with the central power bodies and impossibility of early termination of powers of local deputies.
According to the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) speaker Volodymyr Groysman, the Constitutional Court conclusion is expected in late August, after which the Rada deputies will have two voting procedures on this document.