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Ukraine Contact Group’s political subgroup to have next meeting on September 15-16

MINSK, September 8. /TASS/. The subgroup on political issues of the Contact Group on Ukraine will have its next two-day meeting on September 15-16, Special Representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine Martin Sajdik said on Tuesday.

He said the group had discussed issues related to Donbass’ special status and decided to invigorate its work, for which ends it would gather for a meeting in Minsk on September 15 and 16.

Sajdik said that the meeting features a constructive exchange of opinions on the special status and local elections in a number of districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

In turn, Denis Pushilin, the representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), told journalists after the Contact Group meeting that "the political group so far has nothing to boast of."

The political subgroup meeting weekly since the beginning of this summer is tasked to discuss problems of Donbas’ special status and local elections in the region.

At a regular meeting of the political subgroup on September 1, representatives of the self-proclaimed republics presented their draft edition of article 10 of the law on special status, which provided for immediate enforcement of that law and cancelled the amendment of March 17.

The issue of elections in Donbas is still unsettled. Under the law on local elections passed by Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament), such elections are not to be held in territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not controlled by Kiev. The self-proclaimed republics said this law was a violation of the Minsk agreements and announced their own elections on October 18 in the Donetsk Republic and on November 1 in the Luhansk Republic.